Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (September 8, 1864 - June 21, 1929) was a sociologist and political scientist, known as an early and powerful proponent of the "New Liberal" movement in England. He worked as a journalist for a decade, as a secretary for a trade union, and later as a professor of sociology at the University of London.

Hobhouse was strongly influenced by the work of John Stuart Mill, and was agnostic, a feminist, a secularist and described himself as a liberal socialist. He argued that wealth had a social dimension, and was not acquired through individual effort, but rather social organization. He was against imperialism, as he was against the "archaic order of society and older forms of coercion" as well. His sister, Emily Hobhouse was also a feminist, anti-imperialist and was best known for revealing the awful conditions inside British incarceration camps in South Africa, particularly those holding women and children.

The Labour Movement was one of Hobhouse's first book, published in 1893. He wrote numerous other works, including Democracy and Reaction (1905), The Rational Good: A Study in the Logic of Practice (1921); The Elements of Social Justice (1922).

This new edition is dedicated to Steven Rathgeb Smith, able director of the American Political Science Association.