This book aims to provide an overview of the history of socialist ideology, strategy, policy and institutions in Britain since the 1880s. It looks at how the promise of socialism became adjusted by perceived notions of socialist societies elsewhere, with their characteristics of centralism, bureaucracy, paternalism, uniformity and inefficiency. The author traces the relationship between socialist ideas and institutions since the founding of the Fabian Society in 1884, including Marxism, guild socialism, communism, centrism, the Labour party and present day left-wing factions, maintaining a historical approach and aiming to elucidate the thought of socialist writers from the Webbs, Shaw and Wells through Cole, Tawny, Laski and Orwell to Crosland.