Social Histories of Class

Here is a selection of some of the most influential work on the social history of the working class in Britain and some of the most recent studies. Please contact Helen Rogers ([email protected]) with further suggestions.

August, Andrew, The British Working Class, 1832-1940. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2007

August, Andrew. ‘A Culture of Consolation?:  Rethinking Politics in Working-Class London, 1870-1914’, Historical Research, 74: 184 2001 193-219.

Benson, John. The Working Class in Britain, 1850-1939 London: I.B. Tauris, 2003

Bourke, Joanna. Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 1890-1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity London: Routledge, 1994

Cannadine, David. Class in Britain New Haven and London, 1998

Chinn, Carl. Poverty Amidst Prosperity: Urban Poor in England, 1834–1914 Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995

Chinn, Carl. They Worked All Their Lives: Women of the Urban Poor in England, 1880–1939 Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988

Clapson, Mark. Working-Class Suburb: Social Change on an English Council Estate, 1930 – 2010. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.

Crook, Penny. “Rethinking Assemblage Analysis: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Working-Class Neighborhoods”. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 15.4 (2011) 582 – 593. DOI: 10.1007/s10761-011-0158-6.

Davies, Andrew  and Steven Fielding  (eds) Workers’ worlds. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992.

Davis, John. ‘The London Cabbie and the Rise of Essex Man’ in in Classes Cultures and Politics: Essays on British History for Ross McKibbin eds. Griffiths, Clare V.J; James J. Nott, and William Whyte. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011: 102-117.

Field, Geoffrey. Blood, Sweat, and Toil. Remaking the British Working Class, 1939-1945 Oxford University Press, 2011

Hall, David. Working Lives: The Forgotten Voices of Britain’s Post-War Working Class. London: Bantam Press, 2012.

Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy. Chatto, London, 1957.

Howarth, Janet. “Classes and Cultures in England After 1951: The Case of Working-Class Women” in Classes Cultures and Politics: Essays on British History for Ross McKibbin eds. Griffiths, Clare V.J; James J. Nott, and William Whyte. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011: 85 – 101.

Kean, Hilda, London Stories: Personal Lives, Public Histories: Creating Personal and Public Histories of Working-Class London London: Rivers Oram, 2004

Kelley, Victoria. Soap and Water: Cleanliness, Dirt and the Working Classes in Victorian and Edwardian Britain London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.

Kirk, John Anthony, Twentieth-Century Writing and the British Working Class Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003

Laing, Stuart. Representations of Working-Class Life, 1957-1964, Macmillan, London, 1986.

Long, Paul. Only in the Common People. The Aesthetics of Class in Post-War Britain, Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle, 2008

McKibbin, Ross. Classes and Cultures: England, 1918-1951 Oxford: OUP, 1998

McKibbin, Ross. The Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain, 1880-1950 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Parker, Tony. People of Providence. A Housing Estate and Some of Its Inhabitants, Hutchinson, London, 1983.

Savage, Mike. Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: the Politics of Method, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011.

Seabrook, Jeremy. Working Class Childhood. An Oral History, Victor Gollancz, London, 1982.

Stedman Jones, Gareth. Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Todd, Selina, ‘Affluence, Class and Crown Street: Reinvestigating the Post-War Working Class’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 22, no. 4 2008, pp. 501-518.