The Essay: The Enormous Condescension of Posterity

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The Essay: The Enormous Condescension of Posterity: Those Thompson Left Behind

Those Thompson Left Behind

The Enormous Condescension of Posterity

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, The Enormous Condescension of Posterity, Those Thompson Left Behind

Christienna Fryar on the inspiration of EP Thompson's classic work of social history.

Christienna Fryar remembers how EP Thompson's classic work of social history The Making of the English Working Class resonated with her own experiences, growing up in the USA.

Sixty years after it was first published, five essayists reflect on the legacy, ideas and personal inspiration of The Making of the English Working Class – and plot its place in the present day.

EP Thompson's landmark social history, The Making of the English Working Class, is a book that changed lives. In an academic world where history was primarily concerned with power and political reform, EP Thompson sought to rescue working people from, as he put it, "the enormous condescension of posterity".

It's a book that lies at the root of contemporary social history, of cultural studies, sociology and anthropology, where, in the years after its publication, the idea of agency – the 'making' of the title – came to be a defining touchstone in thinking about culture and society. And it was popular too, even if its easily recognisable blue Pelican covers – and almost 1,000 pages – were possibly more dipped into than read cover to cover.

In this essay, writer and historian Christienna Fryar reflects on EP Thompson's silence about slavery – and remembers how his account of Methodism resonated with her own experiences growing up in the United States and her first research interests as a working historian.

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EP Thompson and his social history, The Making of the English Working Class, reassessed.

EP Thompson's subversive social history, The Making of the English Working Class, is a book that changed lives. But does it still speak as clearly in the 21st century?

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