Among the imaginative responses to the industrial revolution was a set of ‘industrial novels’, written and set in Britain. These included Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855), both by Elizabeth Gaskell, Sybil (1845), by Benjamin Disraeli, a future prime minister of Great Britain, Alton Locke (1850), by Charles Kingsley, Felix Holt (1866), by George Eliot, and Hard Times (1854), by Charles Dickens, an extract from which began this chapter. The main themes of these books were not only criticism of the new society, but also a fear of violence that was felt might erupt from the working
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