A pioneering study of Victorian and Edwardian fatherhood, investigating what being, and having, a father meant to working-class people. Based on working-class autobiography, the book challenges dominant assumptions about absent or 'feckless' fathers, and reintegrates the paternal figure within the emotional life of families. Locating autobiography within broader social and cultural commentary, Julie-Marie Strange considers material culture, everyday practice, obligation, duty and comedy as sites for the development and expression of complex emotional lives. Emphasising the importance of separating men as husbands from men as fathers, Strange explores how emotional ties were formed between fathers and their children, the models of fatherhood available to working-class men, and the ways in which fathers interacted with children inside and outside the home. She explodes the myth that working-class interiorities are inaccessible or unrecoverable, and locates life stories in the context of other sources, including social surveys, visual culture and popular fiction.

Following the publication of Liza of Lambeth, W. Somerset Maugham would go on to establish himself as one of the most prolific, best-selling novelists of the twentieth century. For all that Liza did not dramatize life in a thieves’ den or depict the poor as atavistic brutes, its honest treatment of working-class pastimes and appetites offended middle-class readers as much as the bludgeonings and chivings of Arthur Morrison’s violent A Child of the Jago had one year before. Maugham vividly captured a working-class couple’s illicit romance and a neighborhood’s collective surveillance and punishment of the woman’s promiscuity and the man’s marital infidelity. Today, the novel’s treatment of women’s experiences, working-class life, and health and medicine in the Victorian city are freshly relevant.

In 1889, Samuel Winkworth Silver’s rubber and electrical factory was the site of a massive worker revolt that upended the London industrial district which bore his name: Silvertown. Once referred to as the “Abyss” by Jack London, Silvertown was notorious for oppressive working conditions and the relentless grind of production suffered by its largely unorganized, unskilled workers. These workers, fed-up with their lot and long ignored by traditional craft unions, aligned themselves with the socialist-led “New Unionism” movement. Their ensuing strike paralyzed Silvertown for three months. The strike leaders— including Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, Eleanor Marx, and Will Thorne—and many workers viewed the trade union struggle as part of a bigger fight for a “co-operative commonwealth.” With this goal in mind, they shut down Silvertown and, in the process, helped to launch a more radical, modern labor movement. Historian and novelist John Tully, author of the monumental social history of the rubber industry The Devil’s Milk, tells the story of the Silvertown strike in vivid prose. He rescues the uprising— overshadowed by other strikes during this period—from relative obscurity and argues for its significance to both the labor and socialist movements. And, perhaps most importantly, Tully presents the Silvertown Strike as a source of inspiration for today’s workers, in London and around the world, who continue to struggle for better workplaces and the vision of a “co-operative commonwealth.”

This book examines life in the homes inhabited by the working class over the long nineteenth century. These working-class homes are often imagined as distinctly unhomely spaces, which the inhabitants struggled to fill with even the most basic of furniture, let alone acquire the comforts associated with middle-class domestic space. The concerned reformers of industrialising towns and cities painted a picture of severe deprivation, of rooms that were both cramped yet bare at the same time, and disease-ridden spaces from which their subjects required rescue. It is an image which is not only inadequate, but which also robs working-class people of their agency in creating domestic spaces which allowed for the expression of personal and familial feeling. Bringing together emerging scholars who challenge these ideas and using a range of innovative sources and approaches, this edited collection presents a new understanding of working-class homes.

“Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing. … Do your devilmost … for the Jago’s got you!” Dicky Perrott, growing up in the notoriously criminal enclave of the Jago, listens and learns. Compelled by his family’s circumstances to provide for his mother and siblings, he sharpens his skills as a boy thief. Along the way, he navigates the Jago’s topsy-turvy ethics, vacillating between the rival messages of his mentors, a devious local fence and a righteous slum priest. Relentless in its bleakness and violence, A Child of the Jago captures the desperate struggle for survival in 1890s East London. This Broadview Edition provides the literary, socio-historical, and philosophical contexts vital to readers’ understanding and appreciation of the novel. Historical appendices include materials on eugenics, hooliganism, women’s sweated labor, cultural philanthropy, and the debate over the novel’s accuracy.

Forming a critical introduction to the history of women's autobiography from the mid 18th-century to the present, this book analyses the most important changes in women's autobiography, exploring their motivation, context, style, and the role of life experiences. Caine effortlessly segues across three centuries of history: from the emergence of the 'modern autobiography' in the 18th-century which laid bare the scandalous lives of 'fallen women', to the literary and suffragist autobiographies of the 19th-century to the establishment of feminist publishers in the 20th century and the taboo-shattering autobiographies they produced. The result is a much-needed history, one which provides a different way of thinking about the trajectory of genre information. Caine's compelling study fills an important gap in the genre of autobiography, by embracing a wide range of women and offering an extensive discussion of the autobiographies of women across the 19th and 20th centuries, making it ideal for classroom use.