The Working-Class Intellectual in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain (review)

Recent years have witnessed a growing awareness of working-class literature within Victorian studies. Working-class writers are increasingly present in anthologies and course syllabi alike. The publication of this wide-ranging essay collection attests to the vitality of this burgeoning interest as it brings together established and emerging scholars from three continents to discuss the role of the working-, or labouring-, class intellectual across two centuries. This is an ambitious task that, as Aruna Krisnamurthy notes in her lucid introductory essay, presents difficulties of periodization and focus. Krishnamurthy resolves the first by identifying three stages in the development of the working-class intellectual from the patronized plebeian poets of the eighteenth century, through the radicalized artisans of the 1790s, to the explicitly counter-hegemonic working-class intellectuals of the Chartist period and beyond. Broadly speaking, these historical divisions map onto the eighteenth-century, Romantic, and Victorian literary periods, and six of the twelve essays have a Victorian focus, although all can be profitably read by scholars working in the field of working-class literature and culture.

The second question, that of focus, is more difficult to manage. Clearly the category of the working-class intellectual itself might be expected to be a central concern of such a volume. For the most part, however, contributors assume that the definition and function of a working-class intellectual is self-evident. Indeed, the most sustained engagement with this question occurs in Krishnamurthy’s introductory essay. Whilst acknowledging the influence exerted by the power/knowledge theorists (particularly Michel Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman), Krishnamurthy declares her preference for James Epstein’s essentially Gramscian definition of an intellectual as “someone who assumes the role of persuader, consciously producing or conveying ideas to a public” (qtd. in Krishnamurthy 2). This broad definition allows the inclusion of a wide range of figures within the study, thus giving the reader a sense of the breadth and variety of working-class intellectual production. Its very generality, however, requires a complementary analysis of the types of intellectual work and their political and social effects. Krishnamurthy invokes Antonio Gramsci’s ideas of “traditional” and “organic” intellectuals and hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects—and discusses their analytical utility—but only two of her fellow contributors (William J. Christmas and Richard Salmon) join in this debate. As a result the volume reads like a stimulating series of essays talking for the most part about individual working-class writers rather than a collective exploration of the category of the working-class intellectual.

This criticism should not be allowed to overshadow, however, the fact that the volume contains many contributions that will be of general interest to scholars working within Victorian studies. In particular, scholars interested in the interchange between middle-class respectability and working-class radicalism will find much of interest in the essays by Salmon, Rob Breton, Sambudha Sen, Alice Jenkins, and Ian Peddie, as well as Krishnamurthy’s second contribution.

The collection indicates, furthermore, a new phase in the study of working-class literature is underway. The ongoing project of archival retrieval has been joined by a greater theoretical self-reflexivity. Many of the essays express impatience with certain inherited critical and theoretical models. For example, Monica Smith Hart, writing on Ann Yearsley, astutely identifies the limitations of the critical binary that assumes “plebeian writings automatically enact radical rebellion or absolute assimilation” (54). Similarly, both Jenkins and Julie F. Codell (writing on Michael Faraday and Alexander Somerville, respectively) raise the question of what to do with those writers and writings that challenge established critical models. The inescapable pressures of the essay form preclude either writer from fully elaborating an alternative model, although both suggest possible directions of travel—a greater emphasis on the aesthetic in Jenkins’s case and an engagement with autoethnography for Codell. One essay that does offer a more extensive retheorising is Luke R. J. Maynard’s application of “some recent theories of ‘lesbian feminists...