The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose

Rose argues convincingly that the two were indeed mutually reinforcing: by the use of concepts such as the political, social, and cultural 'frame' through which workers read texts, he makes a good case that the canon of traditional literature has exercised a profound.

Drawing on workers memoirs, social surveys, library registers and more, the author discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves and what they knew. 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. The end result is a picture of plebeian reading habits directed towards the ideal of an Arnoldian liberal education, with intellectual freedom, wider conceptions of life, and greater dignity and self-respect being at least as important to workers as improved standards of living for themselves or their class. About this title This intriguing book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. This is a landmark intellectual history of Britain’s working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. He controls for the representativeness of this corpus (inherently skewed towards male, skilled, and politically progressive workers) by the use of oral history, educational records, library data, sociological surveys, and opinion polls in order to obtain about as accurate a portrayal of popular reader response as we are ever likely to get. : The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (9780300088861) by Rose, Jonathan and a great selection of similar New, Used and Collectible Books available now at great prices.

Rose seems to have read virtually every published and unpublished popular memoir or diary in existence. It surveys popular literacy from the early eighteenth century to the 1960s, it undertakes not only the difficult task of analyzing what workers read, but also the seemingly impossible task of how they read it, and, in attempting to rescue workers from the 'enormous condescension' of later cultural critics, modernist authors, and post-modernist theorists, it displays an empathetic historical sense and a refreshing intellectual contrariness. This is a big book: big in size, big in its ambitions, and big-hearted. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2001.

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose