Why did I love this book?
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.
2 authors picked The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
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.