Thomas Wright (12 April 1839 – 19 February 1909) was an English social commentator.Alastair J. Reid, ‘Wright, Thomas (1839–1909)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, Oxford University Press, Oct 2006. Retrieved 18 April 2010.
He was the son of a blacksmith who became a tramping worker, before finding employment as a mutual labourer in an engineering firm. He studied on his own, and in 1872 became one of the first national school-board visitors. He wrote widely on the world of the working man into which he had been born.Judith Flanders, Amazon, The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London, online edn, Atlantic Books (1 October 2012)
Wright's essays on social commentary were published in three volumes: Some Habits and Customs of the Working Classes (1867), The Great Unwashed (1868), and Our New Masters (1873).
Notes
Further reading A. J. Reid, 'Intelligent artisans and aristocrats of labour: the essays of Thomas Wright', in J. Winter (ed.), The Working Class in Modern British History: Essays in Honour of Henry Pelling (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 171–86.