This course investigates the nature and implications of industrialization from several points of view. It explores the origins of the modern world as we know it in the triumph of modern industrial capitalism as it developed ever new strategies for harnessing the labour of the working classes, while making the enslavement of Africans imperative for agricultural sectors in economies in the Americas and the West Indies. In the novels selected for this course, we will encounter issues that appeared as urgent concerns to nineteenth century writers, including the breakdown of traditional religious beliefs; the alienation and isolation of the individual as s/he loses personhood and becomes a unit of labour; changing attitudes toward nature as it disappears to make way for factories and their attendant smokestacks and as fresh air is supplanted by coal dust; the role of education in creating opportunity and making trouble; and the affirmation of beauty in the human spirit.