richard hoggart
the uses of literacy: aspects of working-class life
One of the Guardian’s 100 best non fiction books of all time.
OUTLINE
Hoggart gives an insight into the close-knit values of Northern England's vanishing working-class communities, and weaves this together with his views on the arrival of a new, homogenous 'mass' US-influenced culture. His headline-grabbing bestseller opened up a whole new area of cultural study and remains essential reading, both as a historical document, and as a commentary on class, poverty and the media.
REVIEWS
Hoggart's classic, The Uses of Literacy (1956), is firm in its place among the great books of the 20th century. It gave an immensely detailed picture, lit up with knowledge and affection, of British urban working-class people in the years spanning the second world war… The book was at once recognised not only as "an exquisitely drawn portrait" but for its rarer trait of "complete intellectual honesty", which was to remain Hoggart's hallmark and helped him become one of the most watchful, formidable consciences of his age. - the Guardian.
Richard Hoggart was once described as "today's Ruskin" and is given to quoting Ruskin's maxim that "the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way". It is this unadorned style that makes this work so gripping, holding a window up to working-class life while also asking, "What is the working class?" - the Independent.
MEET THE AUTHOR
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