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Jonathan Rose
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The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes Paperback – July 6, 2010

by Jonathan Rose (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 50 ratings
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There is a newer edition of this item:

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
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Now in its second edition, this landmark book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers’ memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew. A new preface uncovers the author’s journey into labor history, and its rewarding link to intellectual history.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    544 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Yale University Press
  4. Publication date
    July 6, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6.25 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0300153651
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0300153651
  8. See all details
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The Amazon Book Review
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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. He is professor of history at Drew University, where he directs the graduate program in book history.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press; Second edition (July 6, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300153651
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300153651
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.85 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 50 ratings

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Jonathan Rose

Jonathan Rose

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
50 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Elizabeth Burke
5.0 out of 5 stars IMPORTANT WORK!
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2012
Verified Purchase
I didn't know about this book, but Noam Chomsky recommended it in a video on the internet, so I ordered it. I was amassed that the book arrived in perfect shape in less than 2 weeks, instead of the estimated time of 2-3 months.

I am only beginning to read this book as I have only had it for two days now. So far I have read through Chapter 3.
4 people found this helpful
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Michael A. Gareffa
5.0 out of 5 stars great service
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2019
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this book came quickly and in perfect condition. I couldn't be happier with the service and the product. Good price as well.
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Paul Streumer
4.0 out of 5 stars The working classes drove their own intellectual development
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2013
The spread of literacy to the masses is arguably the most far reaching cultural change of the last two centuries. One of the first countries where this took place was Great Britain. Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes uses much autobiographical material to tell us how the workers experienced their quest into written knowledge, roughly from 1760 to 1960. It is a historians' history, packed with information and references. It transforms our understanding of a driving force behind intellectual history.

The urge to read literature did not come from the invisible hand of the market, from the pressure of government or even from education, but from the urge of working people themselves to understand where they stood in the world, and, most importantly, to become an individual. It started as an autodidact movement.

Initially, individual workers, often wretchedly poor, had to make do with religious tracts, old newspapers and second hand books. First they had to develop an understanding of literary conventions, like the distinction between a factual and a fictional account. From about the middle of the nineteenth century mutual help became the norm. In clubs and production sites workers discussed often amazingly sophisticated literature, even when they also read what we now would call pulp fiction.

The Education Act of 1870 was followed by universal compulsory education. In historiography schools often have been put down, but many children liked their heated and clean school buildings, a far cry from conditions at home. As teaching materials were out of date, being an autodidact continued to make sense. The highpoint of autodidact culture and the mutual help societies was in the years leading up to the first world war. It encompassed about 25% of the working population. The classics came in its reach in series of cheap editions. The working classes seemed to be catching up.

In retrospect all though this period there was a 20 year gap between the latest developments in literature and what the workers got into their hands.In that light, the way in which Rose treats Bloomsbury is surprising. Coming to the fore after the First World War, Bloomsbury's writing could not be grasped by working people who were used to Victorian modes of expression. Rose has little good to say about the Bloomsbury group and his nemesis Virginia Woolf. Bloomsbury, while professing to be Bohemian, looked down upon the workers, and, even more revealing, was dead set against the shallow intellectual and literary life in the new suburbs to which socially climbing workers went. However, autobiographies and interviews show that intellectual life there was not dull, and that people read a lot. Even those who entered office life could find there a great deal of discussions. Thus, by the 1930's- 1940s, there were two rival intelligentsia, the middle class, modernist and elitist; and the working class more classical in outlook, and politically leaning towards labour.

Domestically, cultural conservatism could go together with political radicalism. Marxism did not catch on in the UK. Working people often saw Marxists as condescending and engaged in irrelevant discussions. It did not fit in with the Practical Christianity that was the norm. International developments did not mean much to them, either. Schools transmitted only hazy notions about the world outside Britain, and even about the Empire.

After World War II, especially in the 1960s Bohemian culture bounced back, and got a mass following, also among the working classes. Even though they might like movies, radio and TV more, all of these people were literate.

Instead of stopping at this change of medium, Rose moves on to make political statements about the present. He has no good words for university intellectuals who spread the idea that `all subcultures are equally valuable'. He has a point with sociology, a branch of academia which with its jargon has painted itself into a corner. But he misses the point with his equally loathed Bohemian mass culture of the 1960s and later. The last fifty years Bohemia offers people expression of what goes on in their lives, a burning need in a vastly expanding world. Here literature has been overtaken, even though it is by no means dead.

Rose's book poses shows popular demand and action as the engines of the intellectual life of the workig classes of Britain. A like demand and action, but of course under different circumstances, can be witnessed in the countries of the south. Rose gives us much to read and much to ponder. The spread of intellectual life among the working classes is by no means over.
16 people found this helpful
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Helen P
5.0 out of 5 stars Difficult but worth it!
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2019
Verified Purchase
Recommended by Noam Chomsky, great read, but be prepared: it’s not easy!
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

J. Goddard
5.0 out of 5 stars An immense achievement
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2010
Verified Purchase
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. The key to this is Rose's methodology. At all times, whenever possible, he goes to the voices of working class readers for his central data. This gives him the authority to legitimately and roundly debunk a whole swathe of 'top-down' theories about working class intellectual life. Only occasionally does this lead him into potential error, such as his benign view - based on a somewhat unrepresentative autodidact sample - of the impact of modern popular and consumer culture on working class life. There's also one chapter, on the WEA, where he gets slightly carried away with his use of quotations.

However, make no mistake, this is an enormously accomplished piece of work. Rose writes well, too. Theorising is stronger at the end than during the main narrative but Rose is regularly challenging received wisdom throughout the book. The more narrow-minded communists and Marxists won't like it but one hopes that those with some insight might learn from it. For most readers, though, it will simply be a deep well of nourishing historical knowledge of the intellectual ambitions of our forebears and the struggles that they engaged in to wrest learning from the hands of the high and mighty and spread it amongst their own kind. If Rose hasn't won an award for this book then someone should create one especially. There are few social science books these days that one can describe as being of genuine significance. This is one. It is hard to imagine it being bettered and it will certainly be the first port of call for anyone interested in this subject.
23 people found this helpful
 Report
Paul Streumer
4.0 out of 5 stars The working classes drove their own intellectual development
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 20, 2013
Verified Purchase
The spread of literacy to the masses is arguably the most far reaching cultural change of the last two centuries. One of the first countries where this took place was Great Britain. Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes uses much autobiographical material to tell us how the workers experienced their quest into written knowledge, roughly from 1760 to 1960. It is a historians' history, packed with information and references. It transforms our understanding of a driving force behind intellectual history.

The urge to read literature did not come from the invisible hand of the market, from the pressure of government or even from education, but from the urge of working people themselves to understand where they stood in the world, and, most importantly, to become an individual. It started as an autodidact movement.

Initially, individual workers, often wretchedly poor, had to make do with religious tracts, old newspapers and second hand books. First they had to develop an understanding of literary conventions, like the distinction between a factual and a fictional account. From about the middle of the nineteenth century mutual help became the norm. In clubs and production sites workers discussed often amazingly sophisticated literature, even when they also read what we now would call pulp fiction.

The Education Act of 1870 was followed by universal compulsory education. In historiography schools often have been put down, but many children liked their heated and clean school buildings, a far cry from conditions at home. As teaching materials were out of date, being an autodidact continued to make sense. The highpoint of autodidact culture and the mutual help societies was in the years leading up to the first world war. It encompassed about 25% of the working population. The classics came in its reach in series of cheap editions. The working classes seemed to be catching up.

In retrospect all though this period there was a 20 year gap between the latest developments in literature and what the workers got into their hands.In that light, the way in which Rose treats Bloomsbury is surprising. Coming to the fore after the First World War, Bloomsbury's writing could not be grasped by working people who were used to Victorian modes of expression. Rose has little good to say about the Bloomsbury group and his nemesis Virginia Woolf. Bloomsbury, while professing to be Bohemian, looked down upon the workers, and, even more revealing, was dead set against the shallow intellectual and literary life in the new suburbs to which socially climbing workers went. However, autobiographies and interviews show that intellectual life there was not dull, and that people read a lot. Even those who entered office life could find there a great deal of discussions. Thus, by the 1930's- 1940s, there were two rival intelligentsia, the middle class, modernist and elitist; and the working class more classical in outlook, and politically leaning towards labour.

Domestically, cultural conservatism could go together with political radicalism. Marxism did not catch on in the UK. Working people often saw Marxists as condescending and engaged in irrelevant discussions. It did not fit in with the Practical Christianity that was the norm. International developments did not mean much to them, either. Schools transmitted only hazy notions about the world outside Britain, and even about the Empire.

After World War II, especially in the 1960s Bohemian culture bounced back, and got a mass following, also among the working classes. Even though they might like movies, radio and TV more, all of these people were literate.

Instead of stopping at this change of medium, Rose moves on to make political statements about the present. He has no good words for university intellectuals who spread the idea that `all subcultures are equally valuable'. He has a point with sociology, a branch of academia that with its jargon has painted itself into a corner. But he misses the point with his equally loathed Bohemian mass culture of the 1960s and later. The last fifty years Bohemia offers people expression of what goes on in their lives, a burning need in a vastly expanding world. Here literature has been overtaken, even though it is by no means dead.

Rose's book shows popular demand and action as the engines of intellectual life of the working classes of Britain. A like demand and action, but of course under different circumstances, can be witnessed in the countries of the south. Rose gives us much to read and much to ponder. The spread of intellectual life among the working classes is by no means over.
12 people found this helpful
 Report
BWA
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 15, 2016
Verified Purchase
Satisfactory
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R. J. D. Williams
5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 3, 2013
Verified Purchase
I have read this book three times and no doubt I will read it again. Jonathan Rose is an American and I believe his book is all the better for it. The book appeals to me because I can relate it having had parents whose education mainly came through Everyman's Library and Penguin paperbacks and whose enthusiasm for reading was passed on to me.
At a time when the Government is closing public libraries, Jonathan Rose reminds us of their value in society and why we should fight to keep them. But unlike politicians of the past, the present set are happy for the working class to interest itself in 'reality' television shows and watching from an armchair the spectacle of Premiership footballers falling over and pulling fierce faces at the referee.
13 people found this helpful
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R C Cooke
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Perspective-Changing Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 1, 2017
Verified Purchase
I wish I had read this book years ago when I first noted down the title. I would have understood so much more where my dad (a Grammar School scholarship boy born 1924) was coming from. Its given me lots of really valuable perspectives and facts on all kinds of things. One of those rare books that has completely altered my perspective on life and history. Highly recommended.
9 people found this helpful
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