phantasmagorical

“It is impossible to tell how much the fiction and, to a smaller extent, the poetry of the period, in conjunction with such philippics as Carlyle’s Past and Present, had to do with arousing the nation’s conscience. As the sequence of events shows, the initial reforms, at least, were accomplished before men and women of letters addressed themselves to the condition of England question. But by adding their often eloquent humanitarianism to the message contained in the blue books and in the news accounts of constant strife between labor and management, they unquestionably gave greater impetus to the cause. A series of novels protested the human cost of industrialism and sometimes suggested ways by which the interests of employer and worker could be reconciled: Disraeli’s Sybil (1845), Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1854-55), Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley (1849), and Dickens’ Hard Times (1854). The publicity given to laboring conditions extended to sweatshops and other non-factory enterprises as well. Thomas Hood’s “The Song of the Spirit” (Punch, 1843) stirred indignation against the exploitation of women in the needlework trade; Elizabeth Barrett’s “The Cry of the Children” (1844) was the most notable poetic protest against child labor; and Charles Kingsley’s novel Alton Locke (1850) was in part an expose of sweated tailoring shops.” Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, pp. 47-48