A Measured Life

Richard Hoggart's book, The Uses of Literacy, established his reputation as a uniquely sensitive and observant chronicler of English working-class life. This pioneering work, first published in 1957, examines changes in the life and values of the English working class in response to mass media. It maps out a new methodology in cultural studies based around interdisciplinary and a concern with how textsin this case, mass publicationsare stitched into the patterns of lived experience. Mixing personal memoir with social history and cultural critique. The Uses of Literacy anticipates recent interest in modes of cultural analysts that refuse to hide the author behind the mask of objective social scientific technique. In its method and in its rich accumulation of the detail of working-class life, this volume remains useful and absorbing.