The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (Yale Nota Bene) [Paperback]

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.

Winner of the 2001 book history prize of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing

"a book of major significance for British social history and a troubling text for anyone concerned about the destiny of British society."

"superb book ... lastingly moving"

"A magnificent book ... a work of truly human imagination ... deeply inspiring."

"It is hard to stress how important this book is."

"sharply original ... Rose rediscovers a tradition of self-education which recent academic cultural criticism has tended to devalue."

"Rose shows that there was a time when the most elite and difficult works of the Western tradition inspired neither snobbery nor shame."

"immensely readable"

"a historical triumph ... fascinatingly and passionately told."

This text traces the rise and decline of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial era to the 20th century. Using research techniques and a vast range of unexpected sources such as workers' memoirs, social surveys and library registers, Jonathan Rose seeks to answer such questions as which books people read, how and why they educated themselves, and what they knew. In the process this account of the life of the mind reveals much about working-class politics, ideology, popular culture and social relationships.

Jonathan Rose is the founder and past president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing and coeditor of the journal 'Book History'. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.