ABOUT THIS BOOK

An essential history of how literature became a battleground for class struggle and political dissent in Britain.

At a time when working-class writing is gaining long-overdue recognition, British Working-Class and Radical Writing Since 1700 explores the intersection of class and literature over more than three centuries. This volume brings together leading scholars to examine the problems faced by working-class writers and the impact of class on themes such as feminism and anti-imperialism. Spanning from early laboring-class poets to contemporary memoirists, the collection revisits figures like John Clare and Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and also recovers overlooked voices and texts.

Covering poetry, fiction, drama, and political writing, the book investigates the relationship between class and literary production, offering fresh perspectives on how working-class and radical literature has shaped British cultural history. From the Romantic-era resistance of laboring poets to mid-century miners’ novels and the evolution of contemporary working-class memoirs, these essays reveal how literature has served as both a site of struggle and a tool of empowerment.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

John Goodridge is emeritus professor of English at Nottingham Trent University, president of the John Clare Society, and a fellow of the English Association. He is the general editor of English Labouring Class Poets and coeditor of A Cambridge History of Working-Class Writing, and he edits and principally writes the online Catalogue of Labouring-class Poetry.

REVIEWS

Workers, Radicals, Environmentalists and Feminists, Unite! This wide-ranging collection of essays signifies an intervention whose time has come. The cross-cultural and transnational comparative approach to working-class literature and radical writing pioneered by H. Gustav Klaus will appeal to audiences now more than ever before. There is original news in every single essay included here. ... Subtle, sophisticated, lively and eminently readable approaches to laboring-class lit, grounded in imaginative and original research, make this volume indispensable.
— Donna Landry, Emeritus Professor of English and American Literature, University of Kent, UK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

*Christian Schmitt-Kilb*

Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

*John Goodridge*

**I. Early Working-Class Writers to 1830**

The Death of Stephen Duck (c. 1705-56): Facts and Reverberations

*William J. Christmas*

Other Realms of Labouring-Class Antislavery: Naval Surgeons David Samwell (1751-1798) and Thomas Trotter (1760-1832)

*Adam Bridgen*

Three Romantic-period labouring-class poets, their patrons and their booksellers: Robert Bloomfield, Henry Kirke White, John Clare

*Tim Fulford*

John Clare’s Posthuman Utopias and the Legacy of Thomas Spence

*Simon White*

**II. Nineteenth-Century Developments**

Mediated Melodies: ‘Jone o’ Grinfilt’ and Problems with Preservation

*Rebekah Erdman*

Friend of the People: The Poetry of H. H. Horton (1811-1896) of Birmingham

*Stephen Roberts*

Re-enacted Trauma: The Self-Published Writings of Elizabeth Campbell (1804-1878)

*Florence Boos*

Helen Macfarlane: A Radical among Middle-Class Women Writers of the Mid-Nineteenth Century

*John Rignall*

The Miner and the Mouse: Animals, the Industrial Workplace, and the Working-Class Poet

*Kirstie Blair*

**III. Some Twentieth-Century Pioneers**

Paving the Road to Socialism: The Political Leadership and Pastoral Writing of Katharine Glasier (1867-1950)

*Heidi Renée Aijala*

Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (1886-1962) and the Question of Audience

*Kathleen Bell*

Tramp at Anchor: The experimental fiction of Jim Phelan (1895-1966)

*Luke Davies*

**IV. Continuing Issues: Class and Gender**

Woman Wanted Theatre Cleaner (8-12 daily, 6 days): Writing the Empty Stage

*Sarah K. Whitfield*

Intersections of Class and Gender in the work of Tessa Hadley (b. 1966), and Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1901-1935)

*Olivia Michael*

A crisis in masculinity? A comparison of English and West German miners’ novels, 1945-1970

*Steve Eszrenyi*

**V. Wider Dissemination: Cultural Studies, Lifewriting**

Thieves in the Night: Women in the early days of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

*Monika Seidl*

Cultural Studies and Cultural Materialism in Germany and Austria

*Roman Horak*

The Contemporary Working-Class Memoir: Form and Affect

*Simon Kövesi*