The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

by Jonathan Rose

Overview

This is a landmark intellectual history of Britain’s working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers’ memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose uncovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew. A new preface addresses the continuing relevance of the book amidst the upheavals of the present day.

“An astonishing book.”—Ian Sansom, The Guardian

“A passionate work of history. . . . Rose has written a work of staggering ambition.”—Daniel Akst, Wall Street Journal

Winner of the SHARP Book History Prize, the American Philosophical Society’s Jacques Barzun Prize, and the British Council Prize cowinner of the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize for 2001; named one of the finest books of 2001 by The Economist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300257847
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	07/20/2021
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	560
Sales rank:	556,446
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jonathan Rose was the founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing and a founding coeditor of the journal Book History. He is professor of history at Drew University.

Table of Contents

	List of Tables	vii
	Acknowledgements	viii
	A Preface to a History of Audiences	1
Chapter 1	A Desire for Singularity	12
	Scottish Overture I	16
	The Milkmaid's lliad	18
	Knowledge and Power	20
	Literature and Dogma	29
	Conservative Authors and Radical Readers	39
	The Craftsman's Tools	48
Chapter 2	Mutual Improvement	58
	Scottish Overture II	59
	Self-Culture	62
	Proletarian Science	70
	How They Got On	73
	Chekhov in Canning Town	79
	A Common Culture?	83
Chapter 3	The Difference Between Fact and Fiction	92
	Cinderella as Documentary	93
	Audience Participation	98
	Blood, Iron, and Scripture	102
	New Crusoes	106
	Pickwickian Realism	111
Chapter 4	A Conservative Canon	116
	A General Theory of Rubish	120
	The People's Bard	122
	The Hundred Best Books	125
	Everyman's Library	131
	Catching Up	136
Chapter 5	Willingly to School	146
	A Better-Than-Nothing Institute	151
	Possibilities of Infinitude	156
	Strict but Just	168
	Parental Support	172
	Unmanly Education	177
	Regrets and Discontents	182
Chapter 6	Cultural Literacy in the Classic Slum	187
	Sheffield 1918	190
	Wagner and Hoot Gibson	196
	Aristotle and Dr. Stopes	206
	Current Affairs	220
	The Right to Language	223
	The Most Unlikely People Buy Books Now	230
Chapter 7	The Welsh Miners' Libraries	237
	An Underground University	238
	Marx, Jane Eyre, Tarzan	244
	Decline and Fall	253
Chapter 8	The Whole Contention Concerning the Workers' Educational Association	256
	The Ruskin Rebellion	258
	The Difficulty about That	265
	What Did the Students Want?	282
	The Reward	292
Chapter 9	Alienation from Marxism	298
	Evangelical Materalism	300
	Have You Read Marx?	305
	Unethical Socialism	307
	Stalin Reads Thackeray	315
Chapter 10	The World Unvisited	321
	Greyfriars' Children	322
	Adolescent Propaganda	331
	Marlborough and All That	335
	A Map of the World	341
	Building Jerusalem	350
	To the West	353
	Recessional	362
Chapter 11	A Mongrel Library	365
	The Function of Penny Dreadfuls	367
	Poverty and Indiscrimination	371
	Boys' Stories for Girls	379
	The Dog That Was Down	381
	Uses and Gratifications	386
Chapter 12	What Was Leonard Bast Really Like?	393
	Restricting Literacy	394
	The Insubordination of the Clerks	401
	The Bridge	413
	By Office Boys for Office Boys	417
	The Better Hole	421
	Cultural Triage	431
Chapter 13	Down and Out in Bloomsbury	439
	On the Fringe	439
	Where is Bohemia?	447
	Before the Youth Culture	453
	What Went Wrong?	455
	Notes	465
	Index	518

Editorial Reviews

Co-winner the Longman-History Today 'Book of the Year' Prize for 2001


Winner of the 2002 Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, Book History Prize


Winner of the American Philosophical Society’s Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History for 2001



Winner of the 2002 Humanities Book Award sponsored by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities


Longlisted for the 2001 Samuel Johnson Prize

From the Publisher

...[a] rich, invigorating account... [it] has the great virtues of clarity, wit and pungent opinion. It may be a cultural study, but it is the opposite of what the phrase "cultural studies" has come, discouragingly, to mean... It deserves its place alongside Richard Hoggart and Martin Wiener—alongside the writers who have yielded important new insights into our cultural ancestry and who shed light on ourselves.
—The Daily Telegraph (London)

Ian Jack

Wherever possible, this brilliant piece of social history allows individuals from within the masses to speak out for themselves.” - Julia Jones, This Week

The Week - Julia Jones

“[E]ven the weariest cultural warrior will have to make room for Jonathan Rose’s Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. . . . a passionate work of history that brings alive the forgotten people on whose behalf so much academic hot air is routinely expended.”—Daniel Akst, Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal - Daniel Akst

"It is my earnest wish that everyone would find some book out of which they would derive as much pleasure as I have done in reading The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes."—Timothy Larsen, Books & Culture

Books & Culture - Timothy Larsen