2. The American Journal of Social History started publication in 1967. The International Review of Social History, published in Amsterdam, appeared briefly during the 1930s and resumed publication in 1956. Other journals — the Annales in France, Past and Present in England, Comparative Studies in Society and History (published at the Hague) — are distinguished for their contributions on social history. There are also institutes specifically devoted to social history — e.g., the Centre of Social History at Warwick University, founded by E. P. Thompson and presently directed by Royden Harrison.

3. Among the more thoughtful essays on this subject are Hobsbawm, E. J., “From Social History to the History of Society,” Daedalus, 1971Google Scholar; and Perkin, Harold J., “Social History,” in Approaches to History: A Symposium, ed. Finberg, H. P. R. (London, 1962)Google Scholar.

4. This is not to say that amusements and fashions cannot be made the subject of serious social history; only that they are not when they are hastily appended to a political narrative in the hope of fleshing out the “human quality” of the period. In France the history of “everyday life” has been subjected (by Henri Lefebvre) to a Marxist analysis that resembles meta-history more than history prbper. Some useful suggestions for serious historical research are contained in the report of a conference on “Work and Leisure in Industrial Society,” Past and Present, No. 30 (1965)Google Scholar. A thoughtful treatment of One aspect of fashion is Moers, Ellen, The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm (New York, 1960)Google Scholar.

5. Hobsbawm, Eric, Primitive Rebels (Manchester, 1959)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, , Labouring Men (London, 1964)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, and Rudé, George, Captain Swing (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Rudé, , The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730–1848 (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Rudé, , “English Rural and Urban Disturbances on the Eve of the First Reform Bill, 1830–1631,” Past and Present, No. 37 (1967)Google Scholar.

6. Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963)Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., pp. 369, 388. The difference between Thompson and more conventional Marxists has centered On the interpretation of Methodism: Hobsbawm, note appended to “Methodism and the Threat of Revolution in Britain,” in Labouring Men, p. 33Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, Gertrude, “Postscript on the Halévy Thesis,” in Victorian Minds (New York, 1968), pp. 294–6Google Scholar; Thompson, , postscript to Penguin ed. of Making of the English Working Class (London, 1968), p. 919Google Scholar. More recently Thompson has provided another occasion for controversy in his essay, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century,” Past and Present, No. 50 (1971)Google Scholar. This essay is revealing both for its thesis, which differs sharply from Rudé's, and for the manner in which that difference is expressed; for instead of taking issue with Rudé, who is obviously his main protagonist (the eighteenth century crowd has been Rudé's particular domain — indeed practically his invention), Thompson has chosen to direct his quarrel against minor figures in this controversy while citing Rudé on those points on which they are in agreement.

8. Thompson, , Making of the English Working Class, pp. 55-57, 411–413Google Scholar. In his analysis of Mayhew, however, Thompson minimizes this Brechtian aspect of lower class life, perhaps in reaction against the usual reading of Mayhew. Thompson, , “The Political Education of Henry Mayhew,” Victorian Studies, XI (1967)Google Scholar; introduction to The Unknown Mayhew: Selections jrom the Morning Chronicle, 1849–1850, ed. Thompson, and Yeo, Eileen (London, 1971)Google Scholar. For a criticism of Thompson's interpretation of Mayhew, see Himmelfarb, Gertrude, “Mayhew's Poor: A Problem of Identity,” Victorian Studies, XIV (1971)Google Scholar; review of The Unknown Mayhew, Commentary, August 1971.

9. The most extensive and thoughtful critique of The Making of the English Working Class is Currie, R. and Hartwell, R. M., “The Making of the English Working Class?” Economic History Review, XVIII (1965)Google Scholar. Thompson replied to this and other criticisms in the postscript to the Penguin edition.

10. Briggs, Asa, Chartist Studies (London, 1959)Google Scholar; Rowe, D. J., “The Failure of London Chartism,” Historical Journal, XI (1968)Google Scholar; Prothero, J., “Chartism in London,” Past and Present, No. 44 (1969)Google Scholar.

11. Cole, G. D. H., A History of Socialist Thought (5 vols.; London, 1953–1960)Google Scholar; Tsuzuki, C., H. M. Hyndman and British Socialism (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Collins, H. and Abramsky, C., Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement: Years of the First International (London, 1965)Google Scholar. There has been a spate of publications recently on Owenism: Harrison, J. F. C., Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Pollard, Sidney and Salt, John (eds.), Robert Owen: Prophet of the Poor (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Butt, John (ed.), Robert Owen: Prince of Cotton-Spinners (London, 1971)Google Scholar.

12. Pelling, Henry, A History of British Trade Unionism (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Briggs, Asa and Saville, John (eds.), Essays in Labour History (London, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Briggs, (ed.), Essays in Labour History, 1886–1923 (London, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clegg, H. A., Fox, Alan and Thompson, A. F., A History of British Trade Unions since 1889 (vol. I [1889–1910]; London, 1965)Google Scholar; Harrison, Royden, Before the Socialists: Studies in Labour and Politics, 1861 to 1881 (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Pelling, Henry, A Short History of the Labour Party (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Pelling, , The Origins of the Labour Party, 1880–1900 (rev. ed., Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar; Pelling, , Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (London, 1968)Google Scholar. An excellent bibliography of the voluminous literature on this subject is Maehl, William H. Jr., “‘Jerusalem Deferred’: Recent Writings in the History of the British Labor Movement,” Journal of Modern History, XLI (1969)Google Scholar.

13. McKenzie, Robert and Silver, Allan, Angels in Marble: Working Class Conservatism in Urban England (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar; Smith, Paul, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Feuchtwanger, E. J., Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party: Conservative Leadership and Organization after the Second Reform Bill (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, Gertrude, “Politics and Ideology: The Reform Act of 1867,” in Victorian Minds (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Smith, F. B., “The ‘Dependence of license upon faith’: Miss Gertrude Himmelfarb on the Second Reform Act,” Journal of British Studies, IX (1969)Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, “Commitment and Ideology: The Case of the Second Reform Act,” ibid.

14. Roberts, David, Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State (New Haven, 1960)Google Scholar.

15. The best correctives to this Whig interpretation are: Briggs, Asa, “The Welfare State in Historical Perspective,” Archives Européennes de Sociologie, II (1961)Google Scholar; Woodward, Calvin, “Reality and Social Reform: The Transition from Laissez-Faire to the Welfare State,” Yale Law Journal, XII (1962)Google Scholar; Goldthorpe, John H., “The Development of Social Policy in England, 1800–1914,” Transactions of the 5th World Congress of Sociology, IV (1962)Google Scholar. Several paperbacks, of the aid-to-students variety, are useful in summarizing the main subjects of reform: Geoffrey B.A.M. Finlayson, England in the Eighteen Thirties: Decade of Reform (“Foundations of Modern History” series; London, 1969)Google Scholar; Midwinter, E. C., Victorian Social Reform (“Seminar Studies in History” series; London, 1968)Google Scholar; Dyos, H. J., Briggs, Asa, et al, The Origins of the Social Services (pamphlet reprint of articles from The New Society, November-December 1965)Google Scholar.

16. Historical Journal, I (1958)Google Scholar.

17. Past and Present, No. 31 (1965).

18. Cromwell, Valerie, “Interpretations of Nineteenth-Century Administration: An Analysis,” Victorian Studies, IX (1966)Google Scholar; William O. Aydelotte, “The Conservative and Radical Interpretations of Early Victorian Social Legislation,” ibid., XI (1967); Hume, L. J., “Jeremy Bentham and the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government,” Historical Journal, X (1967)Google Scholar; Sutherland, Gillian, “Recent Trends in Administrative History,” Victorian Studies, XIII (1970)Google Scholar.

19. MacDonagh, Oliver, A Pattern of Government Growth, 1800–1860: The Passenger Acts and their Enforcement (London, 1961)Google Scholar; MacDonagh, , “Coal Mines Regulation: The First Decade, 1842–1852,” in Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in Honour of George Kitsoh Clark, ed. Robson, Robert (London, 1967)Google Scholar; MacLeod, Roy M., “The Alkali Acts Administration, 1863–84; The Emergence of the Civil Scientist,” Victorian Studies, IX (1965)Google Scholar; MacLeod, , “Social Policy and the ‘Floating Population’: The Administration of the Canal Boats Arts, 1877–1899,” Past and Present, No. 35 (1966)Google Scholar; MacLeod, , “Government and Resource Conservation: The Salmon Acts Administration, 1860–1886,” Journal of British Studies, VII (1968)Google Scholar; Lambert, R. J., “A Victorian National Health Service: State Vaccination, 1855–71,” Historical Journal, V (1962)Google Scholar; Parris, Henry, Government and the Railways in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Parris, , Constitutional Bureaucracy: The Development of British Central Administration since the 18th Century (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Torrance, J. R., “Sir George Harrison and the Growth of Bureaucracy in the Early Nineteenth Century,” English Historical Review, LXXXIII (1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lubenow, William C., The Politics of Government Growth: Early Victorian Attitudes toward State Intervention, 1833–1848 (London, 1971)Google Scholar.

20. Hamburger, Joseph, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals (New Haven, 1965)Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, Gertrude, “Bentham Scholarship and the Bentham ‘Problem,’” Journal of Modern History, XLI (1969)Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, , “The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham,” in Victorian Minds (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, , “Bentham's Utopia: The National Charity Company,” Journal of British Studies, X (1970)Google Scholar. For a more conventional (and laudatory) view of Bentham, see: Mack, Mary, Jeremy Bentham (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Letwin, Shirley, The Pursuit of Certainty (Cambridge, Eng., 1965)Google Scholar.

21. Housing: Dyos, H. J., “The Slums of Victorian London,” Victorian Studies, XI (1967)Google Scholar; Turner, Frank L., “Origins of the Artisans Dwelling Act of 1875,” Southern Quarterly, 1968Google Scholar.

Health: Lambert, Royston, Sir John Simon, 1816–1904, and English Social Administration (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Hodgkinson, Ruth, The Origins of the National Health Service (Berkeley, 1967)Google Scholar; Briggs, Asa, “Cholera and Society in the Nineteenth Century,” Past and Present, No. 19 (1961)Google Scholar; O'Neill, James E., “Finding a Policy for the Sick Poor,” Victorian Studies, VII (1964)Google Scholar; Wilding, Paul R., “The Genesis of the Ministry of Health,” Public Administration, XLV (1967)Google Scholar.

Factories: Ward, John T., The Factory Movement, 1830–1855 (London, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sanderson, Michael, “Education and the Factory in Industrial Lancashire, 1780–1840,” Economic History Review, XX (1967)Google Scholar; Stewart, Robert, “The Ten Hours and Sugar Crisis of 1844: Government and the House of Commons in the Age of Reform,” Historical Journal, XII (1969)Google Scholar.

Railways and utilities: see footnote 19.

Crime: Radzinowicz, Leon, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750 (4 vols.; London, 1948–1968)Google Scholar; Mather, F. C., Public Order in the Age of the Chartists (Manchester, 1959)Google Scholar; Rose, Gordon, The Struggle for Penal Reform: The Howard League and its Predecessors (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Tobias, J. J., Crime and Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Howard, D. L., The English Prisons (London, 1960)Google Scholar.

Drink: Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Harrison, , “Drink and Sobriety fn England, 1815–1872: A Critical Bibliography,” International Review of Social History, XII (1967)Google Scholar.

22. Blaug, Mark, “The Myth of the Old Poor Law and the Making of the New,” Journal of Economic History, XXIII (1963)Google Scholar; Blaug, “The Poor Law Report Reexamined,” ibid., XXIV (1964). Some of Blaug's findings have been disputed by James Stephen Taylor, “The Mythology of the Old Poor Law,” ibid., XXIX (1969). On other controversial aspects of the Poor Law, see: Roberts, David, “How Cruel was the Victorian Poor Law?” Historical Journal, VI (1963)Google Scholar; Ursula Henriques, “How Cruel was the Victorian Poor Law?” ibid., XI (1968); Cowherd, Raymond G., “The Humanitarian Reform of the English Poor Laws from 1782 to 1815,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CIV (1960)Google Scholar; Rose, Michael E., “The Allowance System under the New Poor Law,” Economic History Review, XIX (1966)Google Scholar; Poynter, J. R., Society and Pauperism; English Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795–1834 (“Studies in Social History” series; London, 1969)Google Scholar; Midwinter, E. C., Social Administration in Lancashire, 1830–1860: Poor Law, Public Health and Police (Manchester, 1969)Google Scholar. A convenient summary of the pre-reform period is Marshall, J. D., The Old Poor Law, 1795–1834 (“Studies in Economic History” series; London, 1968)Google Scholar.

23. West, E. G., Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy (London, 1965)Google Scholar; West, , “Private versus Public Education: A Classical Economic Dispute,” Journal of Political Economy, LXXII (1964)Google Scholar; Armytage, Walter H.G., Four Hundred Years of English Education (Cambridge, Eng., 1964)Google Scholar; Harrison, John F. C., Learning and Living, 1790–1960 (“Studies in Social History” series; London, 1961)Google Scholar; Sturt, Mary, The Education of the People: A History of Primary Education in England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Bamford, Thomas W., Rise of the Public Schools: A Study of Boys' Public Boarding Schools in England and Wales from 1837 to the Present (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Rothblatt, Sheldon, The Revolution of the Dons (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Musgrove, Frank, Patterns of Power and Authority in English Education (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Bishop, A. S., The Rise of a Central Authority for English Education (Cambridge, Eng., 1971)Google Scholar; John Roach, Public Examinations in England, 1850–1900; Johnson, Richard, “Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian England,” Past and Present, No. 49 (1970)Google Scholar; Royle, Edward, “Mechanics' Institutes and the Working Classes, 1840–1860,” Historical Journal, XIV (1971)Google Scholar. A reprint series, “Cambridge Texts and Studies in the History of Education,” has reissued works by Matthew Arnold, Robert Owen, James Mill, and others.

24. The burden of the “optimist” position is currently being borne by Hartwell, R. M.: “The Rising Standard of Living in England, 1800–1850,” Economic History Review, XIII (1961)Google Scholar; “The Causes of the Industrial Revolution: An Essay on Methodology,” reprinted in Hartwell, (ed.), The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in England (London, 1967)Google Scholar; “The Standard of Living Controversy: A Summary,” in Hartwell, (ed.), The Industrial Revolution (New York, 1970)Google Scholar. The “pessimist” case is argued most systematically by Hobsbawm, E. J.: Hobsbawm, and Hartwell, , “The Standard of Living during the Industrial Revolution: A Discussion,” Economic History Review, XVI (1963)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, , “The British Standard of Living, 1790–1850,” in Labouring Men (London, 1964)Google Scholar. Other participants in this controversy are: Taylor, A. J., “Progress and Poverty in Britain, 1780–1850: A Reappraisal,” History, XLV (1960)Google Scholar, reprinted in Carus-Wilson, E. M., Essays in Economic History, vol. III (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Williams, J. E., “The British Standard of Living, 1750–1850,” Economic History Review, XIX (1966)Google Scholar; R. S. Neale, “The Standard of Living, 1780-1844: A Regional and Class Study,” ibid.; Chaloner, R. H., “Labour Conditions during the Industrial Revolution: A Select Bibliography, 1953–63,” Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, VIII (1964)Google Scholar.

25. Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, Eng., 1960)Google Scholar; Deane, Phyllis, The First Industrial Revolution (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Jones, E. J. and Mingay, G. E. (eds.), Land, Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Wilson, Charles, “Economy and Society in Late Victorian Britain,” Economic History Review, XVIII (1965)Google Scholar, reprinted in Economic History and the Historian (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Landes, David, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge, Eng., 1969)Google Scholar; Landes, , Bibliography on the Industrial Revolution, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, VI, Pt. II (London, 1965), 943–1007Google Scholar.

26. Hartwell, , The Industrial Revolution, p. 169Google Scholar.

27. Responding to the pejorative implications of “optimist,” Hartwell has proposed alternative terms: “catastrophic” versus “growth” theorists. (Ibid., p. 172.)

28. Thompson's special version of the “pessimist” position appears in Making of the English Working Class, chaps. VI, X, and the conclusion of XII. In a postscript to the paperback edition, Thompson admitted that his statement of this issue had been “inadequate,” “ungenerous,” and “trivial,” but chose to let the original discussion stand as a “polemic.” (Penguin ed., p. 916).

29. The most extensive series are being published by Irish University Press and Frank Cass.

30. Frank Cass in England and Augustus M. Kelley in America have the largest reprint lists in this field. In addition complete sets of the most obscure periodicals and newspapers are now available in microfilm. (See checklist in The Victorian Periodical Newsletter [Bloomington, Ind.], Jan. 1970.Google Scholar)

31. Briggs, Asa, “The Language of ‘Class’ in Early Nineteenth Century England,” in Essays in Labour History, ed. Briggs, A. and Saville, J. (New York, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Briggs, , “Middle-Class Consciousness in English Politics,” Past and Present, No. 9 (1956)Google Scholar; Thompson, F.M.L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Spring, David, The English Landed Estate in the Nineteenth Century; Its Administration (Baltimore, 1963Google Scholar; Spring, , “The Role of the Aristocracy in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Victorian Studies, IV (1960)Google Scholar.

32. Hexter, J. H., in Reappraisals in History (New York, 1961), p. 112Google Scholar.

33. Moore, D. C., “The Other Face of Reform,” Victorian Studies, V (1961)Google Scholar; Moore, , “Concession or Cure: The Sociological Premises of the First Reform Act,” Historical Journal, IX (1966)Google Scholar; Moore, , “Social Structure, Political Structure, and Public Opinion in Mid-Victorian England,” in Ideas and Institutions of Victorian BritainGoogle Scholar. Some of Moore's conclusions have been disputed by Flick, Carlos T., “The Class Character of the Agitation for British Parliamentary Reform,” South Atlantic Quarterly, LXVIII (1969)Google Scholar; and Hennock, E. P., “The Sociological Premises of the First Reform Act: A Critical Note,” Victorian Studies, XIV (1971)Google Scholar. Norman Gash takes a skeptical view of the conventional theory, but does not force the issue as Moore and others do. (Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832–1852 [Oxf., 1965]Google Scholar.)

34. Different aspects of the so-called “revolution” are discussed by Moore, “The Other Face of Reform,” and by Hamburger, Joseph, James Mill and the Art of Revolution (New Haven, 1963)Google Scholar. Hamburger has also reopened the question of James Mill as a proponent of a middle-class government: “James Mill on Universal Suffrage and the Middle Class,” Journal of Politics, XXIV (1962)Google Scholar; Thomas, William, “James Mill's Politics: The ‘Essay on Government’ and the Movement for Reform,” Historical Journal, XII (1969)Google Scholar.

35. Moore, , “The Corn Laws and High Farming,” Economic History Review, XVIII (1966)Google Scholar; Aydelotte, William O., “The Country Gentlemen and the Repeal of the Corn Laws,” English Historical Review, LXXXII (1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Aydelotte, “The Business Interests of the Gentry in the Parliament of 1841-1847,” appendix to Clark, Kitson, The Making of Victorian England (Cambridge, Mass.)Google Scholar; Aydelotte, , “Voting Patterns in the British House of Commons in the 1840s,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, V (1963)Google Scholar; Aydelotte, , “Parties and Issues in Early Victorian England,” Journal of British Studies, V (1966)Google Scholar; Cornford, J. P., “The Parliamentary Foundations of the Hotel Cecil,” in Ideas and Institutions of Victorian BritainGoogle Scholar; Vincent, John, The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857-1868 (London, 1966)Google Scholar.

37. Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965), p. 7Google Scholar.

38. Neale, R. S., “Class and Class-Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century England: Three Classes or Five?” Victorian Studies, XII (1968)Google Scholar.

39. Vincent, John, Pollbooks: How Victorians Voted (Cambridge, Eng., 1967), pp. 20–22Google Scholar.

40. Moore (see footnote 33); Kitson Clark, pp. 211-213.

41. Hobsbawm, , “The Labour Aristocracy in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” in Labouring MenGoogle Scholar.

42. Vincent, , Pollbooks, pp. 16–18Google Scholar. Butchers were predominantly Tory, grocers Liberal.

43. Perkin, Harold, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880 (London, 1969), pp. 252–254Google Scholar. Perkin distinguishes between the “entrepreneurial middle class” and the “professional middle class.” The professions as a whole are surveyed in Reader, William J., Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1967)Google Scholar. Particular professions have come in for a good deal of attention: Abel-Smith, Brian and Stevens, Robert, Lawyers and the Courts: A Sociological Study of the English Legal System, 1790-1965 (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Birks, Michael, Gentlemen of the Law (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Brand, Jeanne L., Doctors and the State: The British Medical Profession and Government Action in Public Health, 1870-1912 (Baltimore, 1965)Google Scholar; Armytage, Walter H. G., A Social History of Engineering (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Woodroofe, Kathleen, From Charity to Social Work in England and the United States (“Studies in Social History” series; London, 1968)Google Scholar; Gross, John, The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

44. Aydelotte, , “The House of Commons in the 1840s” History, 1954Google Scholar. To the relatively small extent to which business interests determined the position of Members of Parliament on the Ten Hour Bill, manufacturers tended to favor the bill, merchants to oppose it.

45. Booth, Charles, Life and Labour of the People in London (17 vols.; London, 1902–1903)Google Scholar. The Marxist bias, of course, militates against “mere” income as a significant category of analysis, still more as a significant differential of class. Something of this may be reflected in the judgment, expressed by one of Mayhew's recent editors, that information derived from an investigation of particular trades is more “systematic” than that derived from door-to-door investigations. (Yeo, Eileen, introduction to The Unknown Mayhew, p. 55Google Scholar.)

46. It would be interesting to compare Moore's use of the idea with Bagehot's — or Burke's.

47. Vincent, , Pollbooks, p. 23Google Scholar.

48. These judgments and assumptions mar what would otherwise be extremely useful studies: Brown, Ford K., Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge, Eng., 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wohl, Anthony S., “The Bitter Cry of Outcast London,” International Review of Social History, XIII (1968)Google Scholar. Much more neutral in tone is Mowat, Charles Loch, The Charity Organisation Society, 1869-1913 (London, 1961)Google Scholar; the grandson of the founder of the Society (as his name suggests), Mowat manages to be neither apologetic nor condescending. A larger perspective on the subject is provided by Owen, David, English Philanthropy, 1660-1960 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which takes up the subject where W. K. Jordan's more massive works left off. A thoughtful critique of Owen, containing abundant suggestions for future study, is Harrison, Brian, “Philanthropy and the Victorians,” Victorian Studies, IX (1966)Google Scholar.

49. This form of reductionism has been elevated to a political principle by Maurice Cowling, who first formulated it in abstract terms in The Nature and Limits of Political Science (Cambridge, Eng., 1963)Google Scholar, and then applied it to a specific historical problem: 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution (Cambridge, Eng., 1967.Google Scholar)

50. Clark, Kitson, Making of Victorian England, p. 5Google Scholar.

51. And other subjects not discussed here. See Appendix.

52. Perkin, , Origins of Modern English Society, p. ixGoogle Scholar.

53. Checkland, S. G., The Rise of Industrial Society in England, 1815-1885 (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

54. Another series, under the title of “The History of British Society” and edited by Hobsbawm, has just started publication with a volume by Best, Geoffrey, Mid-Victorian Britain, 1851-75 (London, 1971)Google Scholar.

55. Perkin, , Origins of Modern English Society, pp. ix, 49Google Scholar.

56. Ibid., p. 213.

57. An additional source of confusion is the fact that most of the quotations adduced as evidence of the contemporary consciousness of a “working class” and “middle class” actually use the words “working classes” and “middle classes” (e.g., Ibid., pp. 218, 230-31).

58. Ibid., chap. I.

59. Perkin's minor thesis about the birth of the working class seems to confirm Thompson. On other points, Perkin takes issue with Thompson (disputing, for example, the revolutionary character of the 1790s); and in general his view of history is notably un-Marxist, in spite of a good deal of vocabulary that would seem to suggest otherwise.

60. Perkin's theory of a pre-industrial “classless” society recalls Laslett's concept, in The World We Have Lost, of a “one-class” society. Another part of his thesis — on the relation between working class consciousness and middle class ideals — has more recently been advanced by Tholfsen, Trygve R., “The Intellectual Origins of Mid-Victorian Stability,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVI (1971)Google Scholar.

61. E.g., his repeated assertion that the landed aristocracy, from the Restoration onwards, was committed to a policy of laissez-faire — which is both questionable in itself and contrary to the supposedly “paternalistic” character of that class).

62. Butterfield, Herbert, The Whig Interpretation of History (London, 1959), p. 50Google Scholar.

63. A useful work in this vein is Burn, W. L., The Age of Equipoise (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

64. The distance we have come may be illustrated by the review of a recent work, Literature and Politics in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Lucas, John (London, 1971)Google Scholar. The reviewer takes one of the authors to task for equating “politics” with social issues and looking to literature only for evidence or child labor, poverty, and the like. The Victorians, he protests, had no such limited view of politics. (Review by Wilson, Charles, Spectator, April 10, 1971)Google Scholar.