What is meant by this paragraph..i didnt really understand it?

The Industrial Revolution, which swept through Europe in the late eighteenth century, originated in England. The rapid modernization of the English economy involved a shift from rural handicraft to large-scale factory labor. Technological innovations facilitated unprecedented heights of manufacture and trade, and England left behind its localized, cottage-industry economy to become a centralized, hyper-capitalist juggernaut of m production. In tandem with this transformation came a significant shift in the nation’s demographics. English cities swelled as a growing and impoverished working cl flocked to them in search of work. As this influx of workers into urban centers continued, the bourgeoisie took advantage of the surplus of labor by keeping wages low. The poor thus remained poor, and often lived cramped in squalor. In many of his novels, ens chronicles his protagonists’ attempts to fight their way out of such poverty and despair.