E P Thompson signed the contract for the Making of the English Working Class in August 1959. It was for a book rather the shorter but covering a longer period than the Making turned out to be. By April 1962 a note in his MI5 file suggests he was ‘desperately’ trying to finish the book. He did so finally in August 1963.
The original August 1959 contract with Victor Gollancz was for a book of 60,000 words covering the period 1790-1921. The Making gets to the mid-1830s and as Thompson noted was in fact the first,if very long, chapter
30 years and many more books and campaigning later he sadly died on 28th August 1993.
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