Robert Gray

The Factory Question and Industrial England addresses the continuing controversy over industrialisation. It investigates different perceptions of the ‘factory system’ either as a threat or a promise, and the contested meanings of waged work in industry. Making use of a great variety of sources, such as sermons, medical treatises, fictional and visual representations, Robert Gray places the languages of debate in their cultural contexts, paying particular attention to the shifting constructions of class and gender in the rhetoric of reform, and the ambiguities and tensions inherent in ‘protective’ legislation. He then relates patterns of conflict over factory legislation to the features of specific industrial towns. The combination of regional, cultural and textual analysis makes this book a coherent and original contribution to the study of industrial Britain in the nineteenth century.

With his poetry debut "Creek Water Journal" (1974), Robert Gray at once established his name as a highly original "imaginist". He sees the rural world with an unerring eye; how man mars it and in time it re-establishes harmonies of its own. The city - Sydney in particular, with the play of water and light in the Harbour - plays a part. As well as the image poems there are discursive and narrative pieces.

The Factory Question and Industrial England addresses the continuing controversy over industrialisation. It investigates different perceptions of the ‘factory system’ either as a threat or a promise, and the contested meanings of waged work in industry. Making use of a great variety of sources, such as sermons, medical treatises, fictional and visual representations, Robert Gray places the languages of debate in their cultural contexts, paying particular attention to the shifting constructions of class and gender in the rhetoric of reform, and the ambiguities and tensions inherent in ‘protective’ legislation. He then relates patterns of conflict over factory legislation to the features of specific industrial towns. The combination of regional, cultural and textual analysis makes this book a coherent and original contribution to the study of industrial Britain in the nineteenth century.