Understanding E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class at 60
E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class was first published in hardback in 1963 and 2023 will mark the 60th anniversary. A fair bit of the research for the book, carried out in the 1950s, has now been overtaken, either by updated empirical evidence or new ideas on how to approach subjects. Even so Thompson’s theoretical and methodological approaches still command interest.
I’ve been engaged for far too long in editing a volume of essays (for CSP) which were originally produced to mark the 50th anniversary in 2013, although updated since. The project is still live and hopefully the book will be out in the autumn.
Reviewing some essays on Thompson and the book the other day in the British Library, which were published shortly before his death in 1993 but like the volume I’m editing had been some years in gestation and several referred back to Thompson’s formative political period in the 1950s when he left the Communist Party.
Hence I was looking at views from the late 1980s about events in the 1950s. There was a further significant round of commentary on the 50th anniversary broadly from 2013-16 which my book is a delayed part of, but time has moved again.
There are significant issues with Thompson’s book in terms of its coverage of women, in terms of race and still with the standard of living debate. A Making of the English Working Class for 2023 would like a bit different in approach and material covered, perhaps not least in an understanding of how the English working class was not a lone actor in an imperial context
There is another point. The book is a lengthy one, what Thompson said was meant to be a history up to 1945 which which managed to get as far as the 1830s. The book remains in print and much discussed but I suspect not many now carry it around in physical form. Most, myself use an e-version and that means the text is searchable. A search uncovers things Thompson dealt with that you would probably not uncover reading the hard copy. For example there are several reference to black pudding.
As ever work in progress
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