This masterpiece by Engels reflects his views on the plight of labour classes in England. It is based on his in-depth research and parliamentary reports. In a factual and analytic manner he has voiced his support for fundamental human rights. It is an emphatic protest against the barbarianism of capitalism and industrialization. A prototypical opus!

Reproduction of the original: The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 by Frederick Engels

Friedrich Engels' first major work, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, has long been considered a social, political, and economic classic. The first book of its kind to study the phenomenon of urbanism and the problems of the modern city, Engels' text contains many of the ideas he was later to develop in collaboration with Karl Marx. In this book, Steven Marcus, author of the highly acclaimed The Other Victorians, applies himself to the study of Engels' book and the conditions that combined to produce it. Marcus studies the city of Manchester, centre of the first Industrial Revolution, between 1835 and 1850 when the city and its inhabitants were experiencing the first great crisis of the newly emerging industrial capitalism. He also examines Engels himself, son of a wealthy German textile manufacturer, who was sent to Manchester to complete his business education in the English cotton mills. Touching upon several disciplines, including the history of socialism, urban sociology, Marxist thought, and the history and theory of the Industrial Revolution, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class offers a fascinating study of nineteenth-century English literature and cultural life.

The Condition of the Working Class in England is a book by philosopher Friedrich Engels. Essentially a study of the industrial working class in England, the author argues that the Industrial Revolution made workers worse off.

This, the first book written by Engels during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844, is the best known and in many ways the best study of the working class in Victorian England. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire combine to make Engels's account of the lives of the victims of early industrial change into a classic.

From 1842 to 1844, German philosopher FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-1895) lived in Manchester, England, and witnessed firsthand the impact of the nation's burgeoning Industrial Revolution on the poor. In this classic treatise, Engels documents, in what is today his best-known work, the terrible working conditions, rampant disease, overcrowded housing, child labor, and other horrors of the time. Originally intended for a German audience and translated for American readers in 1885 by American socialist, suffragette, and civil rights activist FLORENCE KELLEY WISCHNEWETZKY (1859-1932), this work has never been out of print. It remains a startling record of the era, and is must-reading for anyone wishing a deeper understanding of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, which Engels collaborated on with his friend only a few years later.