Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet. An Autobiography. by Charles Kingsley.

The narrative explores the ambition of a son who inherits his father's tailoring business but is determined to modernize it. Inspired by the rapid wealth accumulation of his contemporaries, he questions the traditional, slow methods of his father's era. With a desire to achieve success quickly, he contemplates abandoning the honorable practices of craftsmanship in favor of more profitable, contemporary approaches. This conflict between tradition and modernity highlights the tension between values and the pursuit of wealth during the transformative period of the nineteenth century.