Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform

Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform presents an original and carefully argued case for the importance of classical ideas, education and self-education in the personal development and activities of British social reformers in the 19th and first six decades of the 20th century. Usually drawn from the lower echelons of the middle class and the most aspirational artisanal and working-class circles, the prominent reformers, revolutionaries, feminists and educationalists of this era, far from regarding education in Latin and Greek as the preserve of the upper classes and inherently reactionary, were consistently inspired by the Mediterranean Classics and contested the monopoly on access to them often claimed by the wealthy and aristocratic elite.

The essays, several of which draw on previously neglected and unpublished sources, cover literary figures (Coleridge, the 'Cockney Classicist' poets including Keats, and Dickens), different cultural media (burlesque theatre, body-building, banner art, poetry, journalism and fiction), topics in social reform (the desirability of revolution, suffrage, poverty, social exclusion, women's rights, healthcare, eugenics, town planning, race relations and workers' education), as well as political affiliations and agencies (Chartists, Trade Unions, the WEA, political parties including the Fabians, the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Labour Party).

The sixteen essays in this volume restore to the history of British Classics some of the subject's ideological complexity and instrumentality in social progress, a past which is badly needed in the current debates over the future of the discipline. Contributors include specialists in English Literature, History, Classics and Art.

Edith Hall is Professor of Classics, King's College London, UK, and Consultant Director of the APGRD in Oxford, UK. She has published more than twenty books on ancient Greek culture and its reception including Inventing the Barbarian (1989), The Theatrical Cast of Athens (2006), The Return of Ulysses (2008), Greek Tragedy (2010), Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris (2013) and Introducing the Ancient Greeks (2014).

Henry Stead is AHRC Postdoctoral Research Associate, King's College London, UK, and author of A Cockney Catullus (forthcoming).

1. Introduction, Henry Stead (King's College London, UK) and Edith Hall (King's College London, UK)
2. Radicalism and Gradualism Enmeshed: Classics from the Grass-roots in the Cultural Politics of 19th-century Britain, Lorna Hardwick (Open University, UK)
3. Coleridge's Classicised Politics, Adam Roberts (Royal Holloway London, UK)
4. Swinish Classics; or, a Conservative Clash with Cockney Culture, Henry Stead (King's College London, UK)
5. The Harmless Impudence of a Revolutionary: Radical Classics in 1850s London, Edmund Richardson (University of Leeds, UK)
6. Making it Really New: Dickens versus the Classics, Edith Hall (King's College London, UK)
7. Classics and Social Closure, Christopher Stray (University of Swansea, UK)
8. Hercules as Symbol of Labour: a 19th-century Class-conflicted Hero, Paula James (Open University, UK)
9. Vulcan - A 'Working Class' God? Annie Ravenhill-Johnson (University of Aberystwyth, UK)
10. Nature versus Nurture: Population Decline and Lessons from the Ancient World, Sarah J. Butler (Royal Holloway London, UK)
11. The Space of Politics: Classics, Utopia and the Defence of Order, Richard Alston (Royal Holloway London, UK)
12. Classically Educated Women in the Early Independent Labour Party, Edith Hall (King's College London, UK)
13. The Greeks of the W.E.A.: Realities and Rhetorics in the First Two Decades, Barbara Goff (University of Reading, UK)
14. Christopher Caudwell's Greek and Latin Classics, Edith Hall (King's College London, UK)
15. Staging the Haitian Revolution in London: Britain, the West Indies and C.L.R. James' Toussaint Louverture, Justine McConnell (University of Oxford, UK)
16. Yesterday's Men: Labour's Modernising Elite from the 1960s to Classical Times, Michael Simpson (Goldsmith's College London, UK)
Bibliography
Index

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