The Making of the English Working Class

"Thompson's book has been called controversial, but perhaps only because so many have forgotten how explosive England was during the Regency and the early reign of Victoria. Without any reservation, The Making of the English Working Class is the most important study of those days since the classic work of the Hammonds." --Ben B. Seligman, Commentary

 

  "Here is a true masterpiece..." --Michael Foot, London Tribune
 
"Mr. Thompson's deeply humane imagination and controlled passion help us to recapture the agonies, heroisms and illusions of the working class as it made itself. No one interested in the history of the English people should fail to read his book." --London Times Literary Supplement
 
"This is an active, valuing history, and its many clear judgments constitute an important challenge to many kinds of contemporary orthodoxy." --The Listener
 
"Mr. Thompson has produced a work of commanding authority and permanent importance." --John Gross, New York Review of Books

The preface is online here and the whole book is online in pdf here.

Online Articles by E.P. Thompson

The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century - E.P.Thompson

E.P.Thompson's ground-breaking article on the English food riots of the 1700 and 1800s.

Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson

Thompson brilliantly explores the changing relationship to time in class society, describing the change from 'time passed' to 'time spent'; the class struggle over the creation of "the new universe of disciplined time" in factory and school.