| Description |
1 online resource (ix, 534 pages) |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Note |
"Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund"--Title page verso. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Summary |
Which books did the British working classes read--and how did they read them? How did they respond to canonical authors, penny dreadfuls, classical music, school stories, Shakespeare, Marx, Hollywood movies, imperialist propaganda, the Bible, the BBC, the Bloomsbury Group? What was the quality of their classroom education? How did they educate themselves? What was their level of cultural literacy: how much did they know about politics, science, history, philosophy, poetry, and sexuality? Who were the proletarian intellectuals, and why did they pursue the life of the mind? These intriguing questions, which until recently historians considered unanswerable, are addressed in this book. Using innovative research techniques and a vast range of unexpected sources, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes tracks the rise and decline of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. It offers a new method for cultural historians--an "audience history" that recovers the responses of readers, students, theatergoers, filmgoers, and radio listeners. Jonathan Rose provides an intellectual history of people who were not expected to think for themselves, told from their perspective. He draws on workers' memoirs, oral history, social surveys, opinion polls, school records, library registers, and newspapers. Through its novel and challenging approach to literary history, the book gains access to politics, ideology, popular culture, and social relationships across two centuries of British working-class experience. |
| Contents |
Ch. 1. A desire for singularity -- Ch. 2. Mutual improvement -- Ch. 3. The difference between fact and fiction -- Ch. 4. A conservative canon -- Ch. 5. Willingly to school -- Ch. 6. Cultural literacy in the classic slum -- Ch. 7. The Welsh miners' libraries -- Ch. 8. The whole contention concerning the workers' educational association -- Ch. 9. Alienation from Marxism -- Ch. 10. The world unvisited -- Ch. 11. A mongrel library -- Ch. 12. What was Leonard Bast really like? -- Ch. 13. Down and out in Bloomsbury. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Working class -- Books and reading -- Great Britain -- History.
|
|
Working class -- Books and reading. |
|
Great Britain. |
|
History. |
|
Working class -- Great Britain -- Intellectual life.
|
|
Working class. |
|
Intellectual life. |
|
Books and reading -- Great Britain -- History.
|
|
Books and reading. |
|
Great Britain -- Intellectual life.
|
| Genre/Form |
History.
|
|
Electronic books.
|
|
Electronic books.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Rose, Jonathan, 1952- Intellectual life of the British working classes 0300088868 (DLC) 00068562 (OCoLC)45610399 |
| ISBN |
9780300148350 electronic book |
|
0300148356 electronic book |
|
0300088868 |
|
9780300088861 |
|
0300098081 |
|
9780300098082 |
|
