England was the first country to experience the emergence of a modern class society. The period of transition which we inadequately call the Industrial Revolution with social causes and a social process as well as profound social effects, of wich the birth of class was the most important. This Revolution began in England because England alone had the right kind of society for generating it.
The book begins with a description of the unique features of pre-industrial English society, followed by an account of the social process of industrialisation and its effecrts upon living standarts, family life and the growth of the towns.
The main part of the book is an analysis of the birth of the new class society, and its development through the violent conflicts of its adolescene into the viable class society of its mid-Victorian maturity. The study ends with an exploration of the tensions between the ideal and the reality of mid-Victorian society which brought it, by 1880, to the brink of renewed conflict and a further round of social change.