David McLellan

The Condition of the Working Class is the best-known work of Engels, and in many ways still the best study of the working class in Victorian England. It was also Engels's first book, written during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844, compiled from his own observations and detailed contemporary reports. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire combine to make this accourir of the life of the victims of early industrial change into a classic historical study that parallels and complements the fictional works of the time by writers such as Gaskell and Dickens.