Why read The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes?

Book cover of The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

Book description

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.…

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Topics

The working class

Genres

European history

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Janine Barchas

Author

This book simply changed the way I do business as a historian and a reader. I love the groundbreaking use of diaries, census records, worker’s memoirs, and library registers to sketch a detailed picture of real books read by real people—not just the official academic record of fine editions with countless mentions of that nameless creature, the “nineteenth-century reader.”

It inspired me to pursue the stories behind the names and comments scratched into abandoned books that find their way onto eBay and the dusty shelves of second-hand bookstores.

From Janine's list on The best books about books, for nerdy readers who relish the smell of actual paper.

Andrew Pettegree

Author

This is brilliantly written and deeply researched, with a wonderful cast of working-class autodidacts and some surprisingly well-known middle-class authors who did everything in their power to denigrate this hard-won learning.

It’s both revelatory and deeply moving. My only reservation was confessing that I had taken so long to discover it. It is a fantastic book and still the fundamental text in the field.

From Andrew's 3 favorite reads in 2023.