This selection of sources examines the ways in which governments intervened to try to influence and improve living and working conditions between 1820 and 1850, and the ideas which lay behind such reform. The book uses a wide range of primary and secondary sources to illustrate the debates that have taken place over such matters as the Poor Law and penal reform. The author challenges the idea that reform necessarily improved conditions. Extracts by and about women appear in most chapters, and provide a different perspective. The range of documentary material includes social novels, poems, letters, essays and official reports and inquiries of the period. The book aims to help students answer source-based examination questions.