This collection of 26 essays ranges over the history of working men and women between the late 18th century and the late 20th century and brings back into print a selection of this celebrated historian's pioneering studies into labour history, together with more recent reflections. Eric Hobsbawm's penetrating essays on labour history and social protest opened up a new field of study and set standards of wide-ranging, evocative, incisive analysis. Essays in this collection include the formation of the British working class; labour custom and traditions; the political radicalism of 19th-century shoemakers; male and female images in revolutionary movements; revolution and sex; peasants and politics; and the common-sense of Tom Paine.