The years of the first industrial revolution saw a remarkable flowering of radical social criticism in Britain. This is a study of the ideas that emerged then and of the social and intellectual conditions from which they developed. Dr Stafford begins in Part I by presenting what will be seen as a very valuable general account of the historical and cultural setting, showing how the language of social debate had been affected by intellectual developments and the increasingly rapid transformations of society. Then in Part II he discusses ten major critics of British society, from Thomas Spence...

In this accessible introductory guide, the author identifies key feminist approaches to popular culture from the 1960s to the present and demonstrates how the relationship between feminism, femininty and ponityand popular culture has often been a troubled one. The book introduces the central ideas of both second-wave feminism and feminist cultural studies and demonstrates how they inform feminist debates about a range of popular forms and practices through a series of case studies: the woman's film; romantic fiction; soap opera; consumption and material culture; fashion and beauty practices;...