Richard Hoggart has been one of the leading cultural commentators of the last sixty years. He was the first literary critic to take the working class seriously and to extend the parameters of literary criticism to include popular culture. Hoggart put the working class on the cultural map. He differentiated between what was offered by the “popular providers” (media, popular fiction, advertisements) and the resilient culture of working-class people themselves. Hoggart’s most famous work is the seminal The Uses of Literacy. Part II (written first) offers a searing indictment of the specious populism and banality of popular newspapers and magazines, the fake “pally patter” of the tabloids and of adverts aimed at ordinary people, and the literary flatness and moral emptiness of much popular fiction. Part I celebrates the resilient culture of working-class people themselves and offers a basis for the argument that working-class people deserve better than what passes for popular culture. Though best known for The Uses of Literacy, Hoggart has been a prolific writer, publishing twenty-seven books, including two in 2004 at the age of eighty-seven. These range from works of cultural analysis such as The Way We Live Now, to works of personal reflection such as First and Last Things and Promises to Keep, and to collections of essays on a wide variety of topics, such as the two volumes of Speaking to Each Other, Between Two Worlds and An English Temper. One of his most important contributions to the transformation of perceptions of class and culture was the founding of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the early 1960s. For Hoggart, public service is a duty of the intellectual. Therefore he has not lived in the ivory tower but has engaged in society, striving for change from within. He worked for five years as Assistant Director-General of UNESCO and has undertaken many activities in arts, culture, broadcasting and education, including: the Albermarle Committee on Youth Services, the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, Reith Lecturer, Chair of the Broadcasting Research Unit, Vice-Chair of the Arts Council, Chair of the Statesman and Nation Publishing Company, Chair of the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education and member of the British Board of Film Classification Appeals Committee. Hoggart was a leading witness for the defence in the trial at the Old Bailey in 1960 of Penguin Books Ltd. for publishing D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. His evidence is widely acknowledged to have been central in leading to the acquittal, which marked a watershed in public perception and shifted cultural parameters. Hoggart was also the first British critic to take TV and radio seriously. He made a number of critical interventions: his Reith lectures, his contributions to the report of the Pilkington Committee and his works on media, including Only Connect: on the Nature and Quality of Mass Communications, The Mass Media: A New Colonialism, and Mass Media in Mass Society. Hated by Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse, Hoggart nevertheless, strove to serve culture in the public sphere, as an important extension of his ideas about the need for cultural quality. This volume affirms the importance of Richard Hoggart, focusing, in particular, on new understandings of his life, of the importance of literature and literary criticism to his method, and of his significant role in literary, cultural and educational shifts from the fifties onwards. It locates Hoggart’s work and identifies his influence within multiple contexts: the working-class and “angry young man” novels of the fifties and sixties; the Lady Chatterley trial and resulting literary and cultural change; the shift from the “new criticism” to a broader field of cultural enquiry; the rise of cultural studies; and educational reforms from the fifties onwards.

Richard Hoggart has been one of the leading cultural commentators of the last sixty years. He was the first literary critic to take the working class seriously and to extend the parameters of literary criticism to include popular culture. Hoggart put the working class on the cultural map. He differentiated between what was offered by the â oepopular providersâ (media, popular fiction, advertisements) and the resilient culture of working-class people themselves. Hoggartâ (TM)s most famous work is the seminal The Uses of Literacy. Part II (written first) offers a searing indictment of the specious populism and banality of popular newspapers and magazines, the fake â oepally patterâ of the tabloids and of adverts aimed at ordinary people, and the literary flatness and moral emptiness of much popular fiction. Part I celebrates the resilient culture of working-class people themselves and offers a basis for the argument that working-class people deserve better than what passes for popular culture. Though best known for The Uses of Literacy, Hoggart has been a prolific writer, publishing twenty-seven books, including two in 2004 at the age of eighty-seven. These range from works of cultural analysis such as The Way We Live Now, to works of personal reflection such as First and Last Things and Promises to Keep, and to collections of essays on a wide variety of topics, such as the two volumes of Speaking to Each Other, Between Two Worlds and An English Temper. One of his most important contributions to the transformation of perceptions of class and culture was the founding of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the early 1960s. For Hoggart, public service is a duty of the intellectual. Therefore he has not lived in the ivory tower but has engaged in society, striving for change from within. He worked for five years as Assistant Director-General of UNESCO and has undertaken many activities in arts, culture, broadcasting and education, including: the Albermarle Committee on Youth Services, the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, Reith Lecturer, Chair of the Broadcasting Research Unit, Vice-Chair of the Arts Council, Chair of the Statesman and Nation Publishing Company, Chair of the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education and member of the British Board of Film Classification Appeals Committee. Hoggart was a leading witness for the defence in the trial at the Old Bailey in 1960 of Penguin Books Ltd. for publishing D. H. Lawrenceâ (TM)s Lady Chatterleyâ (TM)s Lover. His evidence is widely acknowledged to have been central in leading to the acquittal, which marked a watershed in public perception and shifted cultural parameters. Hoggart was also the first British critic to take TV and radio seriously. He made a number of critical interventions: his Reith lectures, his contributions to the report of the Pilkington Committee and his works on media, including Only Connect: on the Nature and Quality of Mass Communications, The Mass Media: A New Colonialism, and Mass Media in Mass Society. Hated by Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse, Hoggart nevertheless, strove to serve culture in the public sphere, as an important extension of his ideas about the need for cultural quality. This volume affirms the importance of Richard Hoggart, focusing, in particular, on new understandings of his life, of the importance of literature and literary criticism to his method, and of his significant role in literary, cultural and educational shifts from the fifties onwards. It locates Hoggartâ (TM)s work and identifies his influence within multiple contexts: the working-class and â oeangry young manâ novels of the fifties and sixties; the Lady Chatterley trial and resulting literary and cultural change; the shift from the â oenew criticismâ to a broader field of cultural enquiry; the rise of cultural studies; and educational reforms from the fifties onwards.

This is the first biography of Richard Hoggart which seeks to tie together in a single narrative his life and work, to settle Hoggart in the great happiness of a fulfilled family life and in the astonishing achievements of his public and professional career, considering each of his books in detail, and following him through the long and hard labours of his different public and academic offices. It is a tale of a good man with which to edify the present, and to teach us of all that now threatens our best national (and international) forms of expression: our art, our culture, ourselves.

Awarded 2013 PROSE Honorable Mention in Media & Cultural Studies With the resurgent interest in his work today, this is a timely reevaluation of this foundational figure in Cultural Studies, a critical but friendly review of both Hoggart's work and reputation. Re-examines the reputation of one of the ‘inventors’ of Cultural Studies Uses new archival sources to critically evaluate Hoggart's contribution and influence, set his work in context, and determine its current relevance Addresses detractors and their positions of Hoggart, delineating long-term ideological battles within academia Brings cultural studies, literary criticism, and social history to bear on this figure whose interests spread across disciplines, to create a text which blends many threads into a coherent whole

In this new collection of essays, a range of established and emerging cultural critics re-evaluate Richard Hoggart's contribution to the history of ideas and to the discipline of Cultural Studies. They examine Hoggart's legacy, identifying his widespread influence, tracing continuities and complexities, and affirming his importance.

In this new collection of essays, a range of established and emerging cultural critics re-evaluate Richard Hoggart's contribution to the history of ideas and to the discipline of Cultural Studies. They examine Hoggart's legacy, identifying his widespread influence, tracing continuities and complexities, and affirming his importance.

How is it that American intellectuals, who had for 150 years worried about the deleterious effects of affluence, more recently began to emphasize pleasure, playfulness, and symbolic exchange as the essence of a vibrant consumer culture? The New York intellectuals of the 1930s rejected any serious or analytical discussion, let alone appreciation, of popular culture, which they viewed as morally questionable. Beginning in the 1950s, however, new perspectives emerged outside and within the United States that challenged this dominant thinking. Consuming Pleasures reveals how a group of writers shifted attention from condemnation to critical appreciation, critiqued cultural hierarchies and moralistic approaches, and explored the symbolic processes by which individuals and groups communicate. Historian Daniel Horowitz traces the emergence of these new perspectives through a series of intellectual biographies. With writers and readers from the United States at the center, the story begins in Western Europe in the early 1950s and ends in the early 1970s, when American intellectuals increasingly appreciated the rich inventiveness of popular culture. Drawing on sources both familiar and newly discovered, this transnational intellectual history plays familiar works off each other in fresh ways. Among those whose work is featured are Jürgen Habermas, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Walter Benjamin, C. L. R. James, David Riesman and Marshall McLuhan, Richard Hoggart, members of London's Independent Group, Stuart Hall, Paddy Whannel, Tom Wolfe, Herbert Gans, Susan Sontag, Reyner Banham, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

How did eighteenth-century readers find and make time to read? Books have always posed a problem of time for readers. Becoming widely available in the eighteenth century—when working hours increased and lighter and quicker forms of reading (newspapers, magazines, broadsheets) surged in popularity—the material form of the codex book invited readers to situate themselves creatively in time. Drawing on letters, diaries, reading logs, and a range of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novels, Christina Lupton’s Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century concretely describes how book-readers of the past carved up, expanded, and anticipated time. Placing canonical works by Elizabeth Inchbald, Henry Fielding, Amelia Opie, and Samuel Richardson alongside those of lesser-known authors and readers, Lupton approaches books as objects that are good at attracting particular forms of attention and paths of return. In contrast to the digital interfaces of our own moment and the ephemeral newspapers and pamphlets read in the 1700s, books are rarely seen as shaping or keeping modern time. However, as Lupton demonstrates, books are often put down and picked up, they are leafed through as well as read sequentially, and they are handed on as objects designed to bridge temporal distances. In showing how discourse itself engages with these material practices, Lupton argues that reading is something to be studied textually as well as historically. Applying modern theorists such as Niklas Luhmann, Bruno Latour, and Bernard Stiegler, Lupton offers a rare phenomenological approach to the study of a concrete historical field. This compelling book stands out for the combination of archival research, smart theoretical inquiry, and autobiographical reflection it brings into play.

The Tyranny of Relativism is an impassioned attempt by one of England's most distinguished critics to capture the feel of British culture at the end of the twentieth century: its moods, attitudes, and institutions. Richard Hoggart presents a double argument, suggesting first that cultural dilemmas stem from a long slide towards moral relativism, as consumerism rather than authority increasingly determines the texture of life; and secondly, that despite its claims to the contrary, British Conservative governments have exploited these changes to their own ends.