British working class reader 1790-1848 :literacy and social tension

At the time of the French Revolution the upper and middle classes discovered that the working classes could read and, in their view, were .reading the wrong things. Making the fullest use of original research on the material held by the great provincial libraries and other unpublished manuscripts, Dr Webb studies their efforts to deal with this challenge from the newly literate working class. Mter a consideration of the extent of literacy, he examines the attempts to influence the working class readers made during the French Revolution and the immediate post-war period. Then follows the main theme of his book-the new, more
positive approach adopted by certain individuals and groups, after 1820. Following a general analysis of this movement, i terms of attitudes, machinery, and impact, there are three etailed studies of attempts at indoctrination through 'in- rmal' education connected with important causes of social ension: the agricultural disturbances of 1830, the new poor law of 1834, and the trade union movement. The book presents a new analysis of literacy among the working classes; examines the work of such persons as Francis Place, Harriet Martineau, Charles Knight, and WilHam and Robert Chambers; and provides the first detailed consideration in print of the work of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It also offers an explanation of the comparative failure of these individuals and groups to attain what they set out, with such high hopes and such Y urgency, to accomplish.