In Culture and Society 1780–1950 (1958), Raymond Williams identified the Industrial Novel as a subgenre in its own right: a place where social conditions, indeed the condition of England, were discussed.

Williams' last phrase remains a useful way of describing imaginative responses to social change. But where Williams identified a literature of industrialisation, in reviewing the Britain of the 1980s we can more plausibly seek a literature of de-industrialisation; and of the landscape, social conditions and identities associated with that process. In the Introduction we considered the culture of public relations and consumption as central to the experience of the decade. But the process of deindustrialisation and mass unemployment was as central to many people's lives. The two processes stood as contrary aspects of contemporary Britain. To an extent they could be distributed geographically. Finance, service industries and increased disposable income were centred primarily in London and the South-East. The industries of coal, steel and shipbuilding were concentrated in the North of England, Wales and Scotland.