The book views the 'hungry forties' through the writings of the conservative Thomas Carlyle, the liberal John Stuart Mill and the socialist Friedrich Engels. It is unsurprising that one of the most fraught decades of modern British history produced socio-political literature of such interest and intensity. The rapid growth of industrial cities, the emergence of working-class organizations and rising middle class power as well as revolutions abroad in 1848 made this a tumultuous time. These writers provide extensive, diverse and high quality reflections on the tensions produced in this key...

A study investigating how the founders of Marxism came to terms with the emergence of liberal democracy as a political system. It examines, in language without jargon, how they defined democracy and how they evaluated the liberal constitutional state, by placing their ideas in historical context.

This study examines the arguments that the democratic movement has had to overcome. A history of franchise extension in the USA, France, Germany and the United Kingdom provides the context for examining the attitudes to democracy of John Adams, de Tocqueville, Hegel and Carlyle.