Artisan Elite in Victorian Society

<p>First published in 1978. Mid-Victorian Britain was relatively stable in comparison with the turbulent period that preceded it and that stability is in part explained by the emergence of an artisan elite with a specific relationship to the society around it. This book examines that elite: its clubs and societies co-operatives and building societies; its values and ideology challenging the notion that these artisans directly absorbed middle-class values; its politics tracing the evolution from Chartism through the Reform League and on to a radical liberalism which existed in constant tension with the local liberal middle class. </p><p>A careful reconstruction of the social political and industrial life of these artisans is set within the context of the local communities and their understanding of the mid-Victorian society in which they lived is seen as the explanation for their values and activities. This title makes a major contribution towards our understanding of the nineteenth-century working class. </p>