In this study, Dr Sanderson reviews the history of education in the nineteenth century and the academic debates surrounding it. He examines the discussion surrounding literacy, its trends and significance in the creation of an industrial labour force. He also considers the successful development of a middle-class scientific culture in the eighteenth century and the relative failure to develop technical education in the nineteenth. This period was marked by the development of the Victorian public school and by reforms in the universities. It also saw the involvement in education by radical working class and feminist groups, who were struggling for recognition. As this study shows, the education system could be highly responsive in some areas and yet insensitive in others to the far-reaching economic and social advances of the first industrial Revolution.