Book People Archive

Re: Interesting Book on Readers and "Great Books"

One of my interests has always been understanding how things came about and 
how we got to the place that we are now.  I enjoy going to the "stacks" of a 
good library to read about all the successes and foibles of mankind.

Occasionally I come across a book that I think is very important and needs to 
receive a wider audience.  This is one.  The Intellectual Life of the British 
Working Class by Jonathan Rose Yale University Press 2001.  This is a book 
which needed to be written.  It is about how people without much schooling 
educated themselves by reading what might be called the "Great Books" of 
Western Civilization.  As well as how those "Great Books" were choosen. And 
the  revolutionary liberation that it brought to the autodidactic reader.  Of 
the trials and tribulations of such people.  One springs to mind about a 
tailor Fancis Place who lost all of his upper class customers when they 
discovered that he enjoyed reading and had a library of more than 1000 books. 
 Because reading books was "an abominable offence in a tailor." Shepherds in 
the Cheviot Hills had a circulating library that they shared. They concealed 
volumes of books in nooks and crannies of boundary walls as they walked about 
tending their sheep. The alienation that these readers felt from their 
family, friends and employers. One gets the impression that cheap publishing 
really brought liberation to these people.  Who made astonishing use of the 
opportunities that they were given.  As well as the proliferation of second 
hand book stores and cheap newspapers.  

Rose also covers the history  of the organization of study groups, 
subscription libraries and Mutual Improvement Associations.  As well as how 
the various publishers (Bohn and Everyman for example) started publishing for 
these people. 
He also makes the claim that modern "public" education destroyed these 
movements and left them with less than they had.

David Reed