History 1437: Class and Poverty in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain
CONFERENCE COURSE
Wednesday 1-3pm in Room 106 Robinson Hall
Jon Lawrence’s Office Hours are Wednesday 10am-12pm @ Room 417, Center for European Studies (Busch Hall, 27 Kirkland Street)
Email: ; tel. : 54303 [CES] x216
This course will focus on class and poverty in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century. Contemporary texts are placed centre stage in a course that seeks to explore shifting discourses of class and social pathology during a vital phase in Britain’s emergence as a decidedly conservative form of social democracy. By examining a range of primary sources from poverty studies and tales of ‘social exploration’ to novels and autobiographies of working-class life, the British obsession with ‘class’ and social difference will be subjected to intensive critical scrutiny.
The course aims to introduce students to the wide range of primary sources on late Victorian and Edwardian Britain available at Harvard. As part of this process, students will be asked to complete two critical bibliographical or research assignments to be presented to the class and then submitted to the tutor (3 pages). Students are also required to write a 15-20 page primary source-based research paper on some aspect of the social question in Britain between 1880 and 1914. It is hoped to organize a library visit during the term to help students identify primary sources that will be of use in their studies. Students must complete a 2-3 page feasibility study by November 20th having first discussed their intended topic with the course tutor. The final essay is due on Wednesday 8th January 2003. There will no final examination in this course. Assessment will be based on class participation (10%), feasibility study (10%), the higher marked critical assignment (10%) and final research-based paper (70%).
Students are advised to read the novel(s) for weeks 4 and 11 in advance.
Codes: PC – Photocopy in History Library; L – On reserve @ Lamont; H – ditto @ Hilles; Co – ordered at the Coop bookstore (cheap paperbacks); * original in History Library
Week 1Introduction to the course
9/18
Week 2Rediscovering poverty
9/25PCAndrew Mearns, ‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ (1883) and @
(with Stead’s responses)
George Sims, ‘How the Poor Live’ chs 1-8
(review @
PC/L*A.S. Wohl, The Eternal Slum chs 8 & 9
H*Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London chs. 11 & 16
PC/LJudith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight ch. 1
Week 3Classifying poverty I
10/2 PCCharles Booth, ‘The inhabitants of Tower Hamlets’ Jn Royal Statistical Society
(1887) OR
Charles Booth, Labour and life of the People (1891) vol. 1, part 1, chs 5 & 6
On-line archival materials @ (includes 1898/9 map)
Online 1889 poverty map @ http://www.umich.edu/~risotto
H*Stedman Jones, Outcast London, chs. 16 & 17
PC/LE.P. Hennock, ‘Poverty and social theory’ Social History (1976)
PC/LE.P. Hennock, ‘The measurement of urban poverty’ Econ. Hist. Rev. (1987) pp. 208-12
PC/LKevin Bales, ‘Charles Booth’s survey’ in M. Bulmer et al (eds), The social survey in historical perspective
Karel Williams, From Pauperism to Poverty ch. 8
Week 4 Imagining poverty
10/9Co/LGeorge Gissing, The Nether World (1889) OR Demos (1886)
PC/LRudyard Kipling, ‘The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot’ (1890) AND Arthur Morrison, ‘A Street’ & both in P. Keating (ed.), Working-class stories of the 1890s (also ‘Lizerunt’ from same collection – not PC)
PC/LPeter Keating, The Working Classes in Victorian Fiction ch. 3 [also 6 & 7]
Week 5 Classifying poverty II
10/16PC/LB. S. Rowntree, Poverty: a Study of Town Life (1901) intro & chs 4 & 5
PC/LA.L. Bowley & A.R. Burnett-Hurst, Livelihood and poverty (1915) intro & ch 1
PC/LE.P. Hennock, ‘The measurement of urban poverty’ Econ. Hist. Rev. (1987)
PC/LE.P. Hennock, ‘Concepts of poverty’ in M. Bulmer et al, The Social Survey in Historical Perspective
PC/LJ. Veit-Wilson, ‘Paradigms of poverty: a rehabilitation of Rowntree’ Jn of Social Policy (1986)
LJ. Bradshaw and R. Sainsbury (eds), Getting the measure of poverty esp. chs 3, 5 & 6.
Week 6Class and ‘labour’ identities
10/23PCA Journeyman Engineer [Thomas Wright], Some Habits and Customs of the
Working Classes (1867) preface
PCThe Journeyman Engineer [Thomas Wright], The Great Unwashed (1868) pp. 1-50
PC/LThomas Wright, Our New Masters (1873) preface & pp. 1-25, [also 253-310]
PCJohn Wilson, Memories of a Labour Leader (1910) preliminary & ch 34
PCAlastair Reid, ‘Intelligent artisans and aristocrats of labour: the essays of Thomas Wright’ in J. Winter (ed.), The Working Class in Modern British History
LJonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes chs 1 & 2
Week 7Living with the poor
10/30PC/LStandish Meacham, Toynbee Hall and Social Reform, 1880-1914 chs 2-3
PCMichael Rose ‘University settlements in great towns’ Trans Hist Society of Lancashire & Cheshire (1990)
LD. Weiner, ‘The People’s Palace’ in D. Feldman & G.S. Jones (eds) Metropolis: London
L*Martha Vicinus, Independent Women ch. 6 (‘Settlement Houses’)
PC/LSeth Koven, ‘From rough lads to hooligans’ in Andrew Parker et al (eds), Nationalisms and Sexualities
PCSamuel Barnett, ‘University Settlements’ Nineteenth Century (Feb. 1884)
W. Reason, University and Social Settlements (1898) incl. Barnett review @
Week 8Visiting the poor
11/6PCHelen Bosanquet, Rich and Poor (1896) intro & chs 1 & 2
PCM.E. Loane, The Queen’s Poor (1901) chs 1 & 5
PC[Lady] Florence Bell, At the Works (1907) intro & chs 8 & 9
George Behlmer, ‘Character building and the English family’ in Behlmer and Fred Leventhal (eds), Singular Continuities
PC/HRoss McKibbin, ‘Class and poverty in Edwardian England’ in his Ideologies of Class orig. in Trans Royal Hist Soc (1978) as ‘Social class & social observation’
Week 9Living as the poor
11/13PC/LJack London, The People of the Abyss (1903) chs1-11, 24-7 full web edition @
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss
PCMary Higgs, Glimpses into the Abyss (1906) chs 2-5
LStephen Reynolds, A Poor Man’s House (1908) pts I-IV, V [1-14] & VIII (images @ OR
PC/LStephen Reynolds, Seems So! (1911) intro, chs 1-2, 6-8 & 12-13
***Feasibility Study due by Wednesday 20th November***
Week 10Labour and the poor
11/20PCPhilip Snowden, The Living Wage (1912) pp. 44-5, 49-55, 157-70
PC/LMaud Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week (1913) chs 1-3, 11-13, 15
Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People, chs 6 & 9
PCChris Waters, British Socialists & the Politics of Popular Culture intro & ch. 6
PCPat Thane, ‘The Labour Party and state “welfare”’ in K.D. Brown (ed), The First Labour Party
Pat Thane, ‘Visions of gender in the making of the welfare state’ in Gisela Block & Pat Thane (eds), Maternity & Gender Politics
Week 11Class voices?
11/27CoD.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1913) OR
LRobert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914) now out of print in
the states but widely available through internet book suppliers (Paladin pbk ed.)
PC/LDavid Alfred (ed.), The Robert Tressell Lectures chs by Williams, Samuel & Yeo
PCPeter Gurney, ‘Lawrence, Williams and the quest for “community”’ in K. Laybourn (ed.), Social Conditions, Status & Community
PCG. Holderness, D.H. Lawrence: History, Ideology and Fiction ch. 5
Week 12Slum voices?
12/4Co/H*Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum (1971) - entire
AND Albert Jasper, A Hoxton Childhood (1969) entire OR
Pat O’Mara, The Autobiography of a Liverpool Irish Slummy (1934) first half
OR any other working-class autobiography of the period agreed with tutor
PCChris Waters, ‘Autobiography, nostalgia and the changing practices of working-class selfhood’ in George Behlmer and Fred Leventhal (eds), Singular Continuities
Week 13Reading period – discussion of research papers
12/11
Reading Week – submission of final paper Wednesday January 8th 2003