This pioneering book provides the first systematic historical analysis of occupational and social mobility in England. Using a collection of over 10,000 marriage certificates to examine inter-generational change, and almost 500 autobiographical texts and abstracts to explore the dynamics of career mobility, it shows how the development of the nineteenth-century economy was accompanied by rising rates of mobility, which made English society more 'open' while at the same encouraging a distinct process of working-class formation.