The Making of the English Working Class

Fülszöveg

The Making of the English Working Class, now published as the thousandth Pelican, is probably the greatest and most imaginative post-war work of English social history. This account of artisan and working-class society in its formative years, 1780 to 1832, adds an important dimension to our understanding of the nineteenth century, for Edward Thompson sees the ordinary people of England not as statistical fodder, nor merely as passive victims of political repression and industrial alienation. He shows that the working class took part in its own making. In their religious movements, their political struggles and their growing community organizations, working people in very different walks of life gradually developed an identity of interests which was expressed in a vigorous and democratic popular culture. Within the conventional framework of English history in the Industrial Revolution, Mr Thompson gives controversial assessments of the popular traditions of the eighteenth century,... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The Making of the English Working Class, now published as the thousandth Pelican, is probably the greatest and most imaginative post-war work of English social history. This account of artisan and working-class society in its formative years, 1780 to 1832, adds an important dimension to our understanding of the nineteenth century, for Edward Thompson sees the ordinary people of England not as statistical fodder, nor merely as passive victims of political repression and industrial alienation. He shows that the working class took part in its own making. In their religious movements, their political struggles and their growing community organizations, working people in very different walks of life gradually developed an identity of interests which was expressed in a vigorous and democratic popular culture. Within the conventional framework of English history in the Industrial Revolution, Mr Thompson gives controversial assessments of the popular traditions of the eighteenth century, the cost-of-living controversy, the role of Methodism and the genesis of parliamentary reform. He also includes radically new interpretations of underground traditions usually ignored by historians, from clandestine Jacobin societies and millenarian movements to the Luddites. But the most impressive feature of this exceptional book is its re-creation of the whole life-experience of people who suffered loss of status and freedom, who underwent degradation, and who yet created a culture and political consciousness of great vitality. The cover shows a collier from Costumes of Yorkshire, 1814 by G. Walker (British Museum, photo John Freeman) Vissza