Brainstorming session

Thinking about mid-Victorian reform movements -- how to categorize them, how to relate them to literature:

• Owenites -- important as a variation of socialism that predates Marx
• Bentham / Mill - Utilitarianism -- focusing on institutional reform
• Socialism to Fabianism - post-Marx, precurser to the welfare state
• Moral reform -- including low church movements, temperance, education (in my head, all aligned with Unitarian activism)

Things I need to define more clearly in order to answer this question

• New Poor Law -- first major piece of Benthamite legislation
• Christian Socialism - Maurice, Ludlow, Kingsley
• Ten Hours Movement (1847)
• Anti-Corn Law League (1846)
• Chartism -- as a comparable bit of working-class activism?
  

Clearly there is more reading to be done here. What I need is a good solid history to get my facts straight. But right off the bat, the literary question being something about literature's relationship to institutions? As opposed to a more personalized "moral" approach?

These are my thoughts so far.