The failures of anarchism as a coherent political movement, and the reasons for it, have been adequately charted by historians. Here, Matthew Thomas adopts a new approach that explores anarchism in cultural and discursive terms. The book illustrates how anarchism contributed to a variety of diverse developments in British society between 1880-1914. These included the status of women in society, growing labor unrest, the development of alternative methods of education, debates on diet and modes of dress and new ways of living in both urban and rural co-operatives. Thomas demonstrates the multi-faceted nature of anarchism, whose supporters included communist revolutionaries, libertarian individualists, rural communitarians and industrial syndicalists. Also considered are the various ethnic and cultural dimensions of anarchism shown by the Jewish movement and Russian, French, Italian and German immigrants. By analyzing the various anarchist counter-cultures, Thomas demonstrates that those anarchists thought to have been ineffectual were in fact at the forefront of a variety of campaigns that challenged the existing social, economic and cultural values of British society.