Frances Trollope, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy

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Michael Armstrong

was the first industrial novel published in England. It was also the first novel to be published in installments at only one shilling per month. Frances Trollope intended that the low price would help to get her message into the greatest number of hands, to be read by people who would be so moved that they would compel Parliament to alleviate the plight of the laboring class, especially the children. Fanny wrote in the preface of her novel that she intended to “place before the eyes of Englishmen, the hideous mass of injustice and suffering to which thousands of infant labourers are subjected, who toil in our monstrous spinning-mills.”

She first got the idea to write on this subject after having read A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, An Orphan Boy (1828). At the age

1605 words

Citation: Ayres, Brenda. "The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 April 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16894, accessed 19 March 2024.]

16894 The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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