The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes [Hardcover]

Professor Jonathan Rose (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2001

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, as they experienced it? 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 proletarain intellectuals, and why did they pursue the life of the mind? These questions are addressed in this book.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

(Timothy Larsen Books & Culture 20080901)

“[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

(Daniel Akst Wall Street Journal )

About the Author

Jonathan Rose is the founder and past president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) and coeditor of the journal Book History. He is a professor of history at Drew University, where he directs the graduate programme in book history.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300088868
• ISBN-13: 978-0300088861
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.7 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,231,706 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HUgely enjoyable survey of workers' culture, June 17, 2002

By 

William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (Hardcover)

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, plays, radio and music. He covers the period from the late 18th century to the mid-20th, using their memoirs, and also surveys, opinion polls, school records and library registers.

A vast popular movement of voluntary collectivism created a hugely impressive working class culture - mutual improvement societies, Sunday schools, adult schools, libraries, reading circles, drama societies, musical groups, friendly societies, trade unions and mechanics' institutes. The London Corresponding Society, the world's first working class political organisation, met weekly; readings aloud provoked democratic discussion.

Education's purpose is to teach us to think for ourselves. The working class's self-improving culture encouraged them to ask questions and voice their thoughts and feelings. The great classics, Shakespeare (often described as the first Marxist), Handel's operas and Scott's novels, all stimulated thought, imagination and independence of mind.

Rose writes well about Marxists' problem of relating to workers. The class described in these pages, complex, thoughtful, independent-minded, savvy, resent being told what to think or what it thinks. This alone explains why there is, as yet, no mass British Marxism, not external influences, or the efficacy of ruling class institutions, or, the ultra-left dogma, misleadership - get the right cutting-edge vanguard and the dim masses will at last play follow the leader.

As Rose writes, "The trouble with Marx was Marxists, whom British workers generally found to be dogmatic, selfish, and antiliterary." They dismissed the workers' hard-earned culture as bourgeois, and "they treated workers as unthinking objects." Do we, now, tell them what to think? MPs and employers believe, "Ah'm paid ter do t'thinkin' `ere." `Marxists' who repeat that approach will, rightly, get nowhere.

Ruskin wrote of those "whom the world has not thought of, far less heard of, who are yet doing most of its work, and of whom we can best learn how it can best be done." The working class will stick with capitalism until Marxists start to learn from them how the world's work `can best be done'.