This study, first published in 1979, analyses the attitude of various income and occupational groups to elementary schools both before and after the introduction of compulsory school attendance. It also discusses the efforts made by voluntary organisations to provide school meals, as well as examining the quality of the meals themselves, before the enactment of remedial legislation in the early twentieth century. This title will be of interest to students of history and education.

Which books did the British working classes read--and how did they read them? How did they respond to canonical authors, penny dreadfuls, classical music, school stories, Shakespeare, Marx, Hollywood movies, imperialist propaganda, the Bible, the BBC, the Bloomsbury Group? What was the quality of their classroom education? How did they educate themselves? What was their level of cultural literacy: how much did they know about politics, science, history, philosophy, poetry, and sexuality? Who were the proletarian intellectuals, and why did they pursue the life of the mind? These intriguing questions, which until recently historians considered unanswerable, are addressed in this book. Using innovative research techniques and a vast range of unexpected sources, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes tracks the rise and decline of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. It offers a new method for cultural historians--an "audience history" that recovers the responses of readers, students, theatergoers, filmgoers, and radio listeners. Jonathan Rose provides an intellectual history of people who were not expected to think for themselves, told from their perspective. He draws on workers’ memoirs, oral history, social surveys, opinion polls, school records, library registers, and newspapers. Through its novel and challenging approach to literary history, the book gains access to politics, ideology, popular culture, and social relationships across two centuries of British working-class experience.

This short book provides a succinct account of changes in children's work and welfare in Britain between 1780 and 1890. It examines both the scale and the nature of child employment and the changing attitude of society towards it at a time when Britain was becoming the 'workshop of the world'. The further development of industry in the second half of the nineteenth century meant that the need for juvenile workers declined. At the same time the efforts of philanthropists and the State led to legal curbs on the kinds of jobs children could perform and the minimum age at which they could commence them. The author concludes that the century after 1780 saw a progressive lengthening of childhood as a stage of life, and that by 1890 children had been recognised as 'special cases' in need of protective legislation. However, for the poorest and most disadvantaged families life remained a struggle, and children continued to pick up a living where they could.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Published in 1984. As late as 1870, a substantial proportion of working class pupils receiving an elementary education were attending private schools, run by the working class itself, instead of schools which were publicly sponsored. Previous studies in this area have concentrated on the latter, however, the author of this study adopts a wider approach by focusing on the relation between the working-class and education, in order to demonstrate the nature of the class-cultural conflict that existed. Two main methods of investigation are employed: the pattern of working-class responses to the official educational provision are charted and the positive traditions of independent working-class educational activity are analysed. These traditions formed a part of the foundation on which resistance to official education was based. This thoroughly researched book extends our understanding of this hitherto neglected area in the history of education.