"The key to the book lies in its title. It tells the story of how, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a new class of people emerged from the process of industrial change that was taking in root in Britain. This new class has gone through various different names, including the proletariat, the lower class(es), the lower orders, even – by those who fear it – the ‘Great Unwashed'. Thompson uses the term by which its members usually refer to themselves, ‘the Working Class'."

Support: Paper