The Condition of the Working Class in England, By Friedrich Engels

To partner his biography, Tristram Hunt introduces a new edition of this shattering masterpiece of reportage by Marx's patron and sidekick.

No one prior to Engels had evoked his own Manchester - and other clusters of satanic mills – with this electrifying blend of data and passion, as he flays "barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one hand and nameless misery on the other".

The dirt, toil, poverty and squalor glow with as much infernal intensity as in 1844. Hunt justly links this map of factory hell with the plight of workers today in China, and other sources of our high-street bargains. This struggle continues.