This book examines how, from the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, British policymakers, welfare providers, and working-class men struggled to accommodate men's dependence on the state within understandings of masculine citizenship.

1. 'So Much Honest Poverty': Introduction PART I: UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE CONTINUITIES OF HONEST POVERTY 2. Not 'Weary Willies' or 'Tired Tims': The Work Imperative in the Poor Law World 3. 'They were not Single Men': Responsibility for Family and Hierarchies of Deservedness 4. 'A Reward for Good Citizenship': National Unemployment Benefits and the Genuine Search for Work PART II: HONEST POVERTY IN NATIONAL CRISIS 5. 'Married Men had Greater Responsibilities': The First World War, the Service Imperative, and the Sacrifice of Single Men 6. 'The Whole World had gone Against Them': Ex-Servicemen and the Politics of Relief 7. 'No Right to Relieve a Striker': Trade Disputes and the Politics of Work and Family in the 1920s PART III: HONEST POVERTY AND THE INTIMACIES OF POLICY 8. 'Younger Men are given the Preference': Older Men's Welfare and Intergenerational Liability 9. 'He did not Realise his Responsibilities': Giving Up the Privileges of Honest Poverty Conclusions Bibliography

Marjorie Levine-Clark is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado Denver, USA. She has published widely on gender, health, labor, and social policy in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain, including the book Beyond the Reproductive Body: The Politics of Women's Health and Work in Early Victorian England (2004).