- Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press; New edition edition (11 Oct 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0300098081
- ISBN-13: 978-0300098082
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 371,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
In 1906 a famous survey of the reading habits of Labour MPs revealed that their preferences were the Bible, Walter Scott and John Ruskin, with hardly a hint of Karl Marx. Nearly a century later, Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes goes a long way to explaining why. His book is a mammoth survey of the autodidact, self-improving culture that emerged in Britain in the late 18th century and flourished for nearly 200 years through religious tract societies, mechanics institutes, trade union libraries and the Workers' Educational Association, until the end of the Second World War. Using workers' autobiographies, social surveys and opinion polls, Rose has produced a rich compilation of evidence, depicting an elite within the working class suffused with Macaulay, Milton and Shakespeare, and contemptuous of romance fiction, the tabloids and sensationalist melodrama. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Roe argues that this self-taught culture produced a working class wary of Marxism (because it was badly written), but also bored by imperialist adventure tales (because they gestured to a world of which workers knew nothing). It is not always easy to follow Rose in his journey through the working-class canon--he is determined to take us into every corner of his library--but it is worth sticking with him. The revelations from his research are fascinating, and his subtle tilts against fashionable post-modernist readings of reading are funny and well placed.--Miles Taylor.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Winner of the 2001 book history prize of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
50 of 50 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a marvellous book! The Author displays a remarkable insight into many aspects of working class culture. I was born and bred in Penrhiwceiber, a bustling village (mentioned on page 241), near Mountain Ash in the South Wales mining valleys. My parents and Grand Parents had also lived their lives there, and had taken active parts in the choral societies and local politics etc. As a child, I was brought up amidst the books they had collected to make private libraries, in fact, I now own them all as part of my own valued collection. I know from personal experience just how accurate this book is, and I can 'feel' the reality of the personal accounts of people trying to educate themselves, against the pressures of having to make a living in difficult circumstances. Many of those people lived up to the ideal that 'school simply gave you the foundation to enable life-long learning on your own account'. Also, apart from radical politics and communism, there were many people, who, by their private learning, were able to separate the 'SOCIAL' from the 'ism' in that word-label. They therefore interpreted SOCIALism as an outlook, a way of life and living, that embraced all that was good, noble and true. It is very easy to forget this today, when so much emphasis is put upon the 'ism' part of the word, that the word itself is regarded as a failed system and an irrelevance to modern life.
I am also immpressed by the author's willingness to include in various places, the attitudes of the 'not-so-bookish' and 'anti-learning' factions of the working classes who ridiculed and scorned the efforts of the autodidacts and their efforts. Such people were (and still are) as much of an obstacle to the private students who tried to put their learning into practice in their everyday lives, as the hated Capitalist class who were regarded as keeping the poor man 'at his gate' so to speak. So, in fact, the pressures against you came from both above and below. I know this too from personal experience.
I heartily recommend this book to all who are interested in the old concept of 'learning for learning's sake' and the intellectual development of the individual. The book presupposes a wide knowledge of literature, poitics, religion and history in the reader, but it is easy to read and I am very glad I have added it to my own - 'working class private library'. Howell Thomas.
I am also immpressed by the author's willingness to include in various places, the attitudes of the 'not-so-bookish' and 'anti-learning' factions of the working classes who ridiculed and scorned the efforts of the autodidacts and their efforts. Such people were (and still are) as much of an obstacle to the private students who tried to put their learning into practice in their everyday lives, as the hated Capitalist class who were regarded as keeping the poor man 'at his gate' so to speak. So, in fact, the pressures against you came from both above and below. I know this too from personal experience.
I heartily recommend this book to all who are interested in the old concept of 'learning for learning's sake' and the intellectual development of the individual. The book presupposes a wide knowledge of literature, poitics, religion and history in the reader, but it is easy to read and I am very glad I have added it to my own - 'working class private library'. Howell Thomas.
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If I could give this book six stars out of five I would, it is an absolutely brilliant book, as illuminating as it is enjoyable. In essence it is the story of the 'Autodidact' (or 'self-taught') tradition of the British working classes which seemed to surface in the eighteenth century, become prominent in the nineteenth century and continued well into the twentieth.
A story of 'mutual improvement societies,' 'miners institutes,' 'self-help,' 'everyman libraries,' of men and woman at work at the loom or down the mineshaft with no formal guidance or tutoring making their own way through Dickens and Ruskin and Pilgrims Progress and Robinson Crusoe and whatever else they could lay their hands on.
A story that includes the story of the intellectual milleau that gave birth to the formation of the Labour Party and which had a profound influence on its subsequent development in the first half of the twentieth century, an answer as to why British Socialism owed more to Methodism than to Marxism.
The story of the effect of mass literacy, of Victorian educational reform, of the class-ridden, snobbish differentiation between 'highbrow,' 'middlebrow,' and 'lowbrow,' of the decline of the Autodidact tradition brought by increasing affluence, greater opportunities for higher education, new forms of media and rapid cultural obsolescence as 'cultural styles supercede one another with dizzying speed.'
The story of what it means to live in a country where Pop music employs more people than coal and steel and what kind of cultural shift that entails. The story of how the working class have been increasingly cut off from 'high' culture and what that entails.
In short, a history book of the highest order, one that cannot be reccomended enough, one that will truly provoke thought.
A story of 'mutual improvement societies,' 'miners institutes,' 'self-help,' 'everyman libraries,' of men and woman at work at the loom or down the mineshaft with no formal guidance or tutoring making their own way through Dickens and Ruskin and Pilgrims Progress and Robinson Crusoe and whatever else they could lay their hands on.
A story that includes the story of the intellectual milleau that gave birth to the formation of the Labour Party and which had a profound influence on its subsequent development in the first half of the twentieth century, an answer as to why British Socialism owed more to Methodism than to Marxism.
The story of the effect of mass literacy, of Victorian educational reform, of the class-ridden, snobbish differentiation between 'highbrow,' 'middlebrow,' and 'lowbrow,' of the decline of the Autodidact tradition brought by increasing affluence, greater opportunities for higher education, new forms of media and rapid cultural obsolescence as 'cultural styles supercede one another with dizzying speed.'
The story of what it means to live in a country where Pop music employs more people than coal and steel and what kind of cultural shift that entails. The story of how the working class have been increasingly cut off from 'high' culture and what that entails.
In short, a history book of the highest order, one that cannot be reccomended enough, one that will truly provoke thought.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of the most important books I've ever read, and one of the most enjoyable. I've never gone back to a book of this sort so often - or so enthusiastically - looking for passages or quotes I underlined while eagerly reading it the first time.
Aside from the fact that it is so meticulously researched, so passionately told and so inspiring - yes, inspiring - a history of men, women and children's determination to educate and entertain and ultimately 'better' themselves, it also introduced me to many great writers, artists and thinkers, past and present, of whom I was either unaware or had previously, for whatever reason, avoided or neglected.
Whether you are interested in the ways 'ordinary people' have striven to improve their lot through art and literature, or an enthusiastically practising autodidact, this book is very much an education in itself.
Aside from the fact that it is so meticulously researched, so passionately told and so inspiring - yes, inspiring - a history of men, women and children's determination to educate and entertain and ultimately 'better' themselves, it also introduced me to many great writers, artists and thinkers, past and present, of whom I was either unaware or had previously, for whatever reason, avoided or neglected.
Whether you are interested in the ways 'ordinary people' have striven to improve their lot through art and literature, or an enthusiastically practising autodidact, this book is very much an education in itself.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Classic In Its Field
A scholarly tour de force which is also written in a clear & witty style without obscurantist jargon. Read more
Published 6 months ago by bibliophile
An immense achievement
I can't add much more to the praise that other reviewers have rightly bestowed on this book. It is both a hugely important piece of work and a brilliantly executed one. Read more
Published 21 months ago by J. Goddard
intelligent and compelling
This books is really excellent - it is a tightly written, propery researched and radically thoughtful study of how people educate themselves and why - as well as some of the pit... Read more
Published on 13 Nov 2009 by Book worm girl
Historical Information
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
Excellent book, good data for undergraduate research.
Excellent book, good data for undergraduate research.
Published on 15 Feb 2009 by Ms. K. Richardson
An elegy for autodidact culture
This is an amazing book that I have gone back to again and again. Rose clearly has an agenda regarding the snobbery of artistic elites, and what he sees as a culture industry that... Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2009 by agleader
Education. Education. Education.
Why were working class schoolboys (and girls) addicted to boarding school stories? Why did a Birmingham theatre have to put on extra performances of Shakespeare to prevent a riot? Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2008 by hbw
Hugely enjoyable survey of working class culture
Jonathan Rose has written a most enjoyable book looking at what British workers thought about the world, their schools, science, history, geography, literature, papers, films,... Read more
Published on 17 Jun 2002 by William Podmore
A compelling view of British Society
An erudite, yet entertaining, study of the way the British working class sought to improve themselves and how the middle classes sought (seek? Read more
Published on 24 Mar 2002
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