Edinburgh University Press Piston, Pen and Press: Literature, Culture and the Victorian Industrial Worker

Investigates reading, writing and associational culture in the industrial workplace in Scotland and Northern England from the 1840s to the 1920s Introduces archival findings which have never been discussed and are largely unknown, significantly extending our knowledge of the field of working-class literary production in the Victorian period Fills a notable gap in working-class historical studies, by supplying accounts of industrial workers discussing their labour in the period from the 1840s to the early 1900s, prior to the first oral history recordings of these workers Contributes to Victorian periodical studies, both through broad use of the provincial press as a key primary source, and through detailed examination of the literary content in newspapers and periodicals read and produced by industrial workers An interdisciplinary study which draws on both English Literature and History to explore the construction of working-class identity across a range of local, regional, national and occupational contexts Based on extensive research into little-known archives this book argues that a significant proportion of Victorian industrial workers contributed to local literary culture, as writers, readers and participants in associational culture. This study concentrates on the three occupational groups at the forefront of large-scale industrial development – textile factory workers, miners, and railway workers. It argues that, for these workers, the industrial workplace created and fostered new forms of engagement with literature and culture. Additionally, it shows that working-class literary production – especially, though not exclusively, poetry – provides a means of investigating how industrial workers represented their own labour, their working communities, and their sense of identity. It combines case-studies of places, publications, occupations and associations to document the richness and variety of Victorian and Edwardian working-class literature.