This book is written by people of varying ages and professions who have broken through from poor social beginnings, deprived backgrounds and many disadvantages into a high level of professional achievement. Starting in working class or slum environments in areas such as Sheffield, Wales, Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield, London, Glasgow and Birmingham they describe their struggles and the ways in which they attempted to over-come their earlier deprivations.
Social mobility, educational priority areas and equality of opportunity are topics discussed as much today as when this book was first published over 30 years ago. This book is written by people of varying ages and professions who have broken through from poor social beginnings, deprived backgrounds and many disadvantages into a high level of professional achievement. Starting in working class or slum environments in areas such as Sheffield, Wales, Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield, London, Glasgow and Birmingham they describe their struggles and the ways in which they attempted to over-come their earlier deprivations. The descriptions in this volume are illustrations of potential which is present in the most unpromising beginnings.
This landmark book traces the rise and decline of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. Using innovative research techniques and a vast range of unexpected sources such as workers' memoris, social surveys and library registers, Rose shows which books people read, how and why they educated themselves, and what they knew. In the process he shines a bold new light on working class politics, ideology, popular culture and the life of the mind. This book has won the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award 2001, the SHARP History Book Prize, the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History 2001 and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Book Award. Book jacket.
Domestic interiors and housing environments have historically been portrayed as a framing device for the representation of individuals and social groups. Drawing together a wide and eclectic collection of well known, and less familiar, works by writers including Charles Booth, Octavia Hill, James Joyce, Pat O'Mara, Rose Macaulay, Patrick Hamilton, Sam Selvon, Sarah Waters, Lynsey Hanley and Andrea Levy, the author reflects upon and challenges various myths and truisms of 'home' through an analysis of four distinct British settings: slums, boarding houses, working-class childhood homes and housing estates. Her exploration of works of social investigation, fiction and life writing leads to an intricate stock of housing tales that are inherited, shifting and always revealing about the culture of our times. This book seeks to demonstrate how depictions of domestic space - in literature, history and other cultural forms - tell powerful and unexpected stories of class, gender, social belonging and exclusion.
In this pioneering work about the precursor to the comic book, Kelly Boyd traces the evolution of the boys' story paper and its impact on the imaginative world of working-class readers. From the penny dreadful and the Boy's Own Paper to the tales of Billy Bunter and Sexton Blake, this cultural form shaped ideas about gender, race, class and empire in response to social change. This study is an important analysis of a neglected part of popular culture.
The forgotten story of how ordinary families managed financially in the Victorian era--and struggled to survive despite increasing national prosperity "A powerful story of social realities, pressures, and the fracturing of traditional structures."--Ruth Goodman, Wall Street Journal "Deeply researched and sensitive."--Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph, "Best History Books of 2020" Nineteenth century Britain saw remarkable economic growth and a rise in real wages. But not everyone shared in the nation's wealth. Unable to earn a sufficient income themselves, working-class women were reliant on the 'breadwinner wage' of their husbands. When income failed, or was denied or squandered by errant men, families could be plunged into desperate poverty from which there was no escape. Emma Griffin unlocks the homes of Victorian England to examine the lives - and finances - of the people who lived there. Drawing on over 600 working-class autobiographies, including more than 200 written by women, Bread Winner changes our understanding of daily life in Victorian Britain.
Masculine assertions, whether of verbal command, political power or physical violence, have formed the traditional subject matter of history. This volume combines current discussions in sexual politics with historical analysis to demonstrate that, far from being natural and monolithic, masculinity is an historical and cultural construct, with varied, competing and above all changing forms.
This book takes a novel approach to the topic, combining biographical approaches and local history, a synthesis of sociological and historical literature, with new research to address a variety of themes and provide a comprehensive, rounded history demonstrating the entanglement of educational experience and the influence of different modes of discrimination and prejudice. Using the lens of gender, Jane Martin reassesses the gendered nature of the modern history of education and provides an overview of intertwined aspects of education, society, politics and power. Its organisation is user friendly, providing accessible information with regard to chronologies of legislation and key events to reflect constancy and change, whilst ‘mapping’ the larger political, economic, social and cultural contexts, making it ideal for use as a textbook or a resource for teachers and students.
Some historians contend that femininity was "disrupted, constructed and reconstructed" during World War I, but what happened to masculinity? Using the evidence of letters, diaries, and oral histories of members of the military and of civilians, as well as contemporary photographs and government propoganda, Dismembering the Male explores the impact of the First World War on the male body. Each chapter explores a different facet of the war and masculinity in depth. Joanna Bourke discovers that those who were dismembered and disabled by the war were not viewed as passive or weak, like their civilian counterparts, but were the focus of much government and public sentiment. Those suffering from disease were viewed differently, often finding themselves accused of malingering. Joanna Bourke argues convincingly that military experiences led to a greater sharing of gender identities between men of different classes and ages. Dismembering the Male concludes that ultimately, attempts to reconstruct a new type of masculinity failed as the threat of another war, and with it the sacrifice of a new generation of men, intensified.
