Richard Hoggart

literary criticism and cultural decline in twentieth-century Britain

Stefan Collini

pp. 33-56

in: Sue Owen (ed), Richard Hoggart and cultural studies, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

Abstract

Richard Hoggart occupies a larger place in the history of British culture in the 1950s than he does in the history of literary criticism. In so far as his work is now attended to within the categories of academic disciplines, it is, of course, for its founding contribution to cultural studies, even though his relation to much of the work that bears that label has long been more vexed than the conventional celebratory accounts usually allow. But such disciplinary pigeon-holing cannot do justice to Hoggart, and claims for his importance need to be made in other terms. His part — both as emblem and as scribe — in what was termed the "entry of the working class into society" in the two decades after the end of the Second World War; his identification of the emotional and intellectual strains endemic to the trajectory of "the scholarship boy"; his demonstration of the legitimacy and fruitfulness of closely analysing the manifestations of so-called "popular culture"; his subsequent advocacy of the values of public service in broadcasting and the other media: all these are rightly associated with his name and remain to his credit. I have written elsewhere about the trajectory of his career as a whole and especially about some of his more recent books, and I shall not repeat any of that account here (Collini, 1999, 210–30).

Cited authors

Hoggart Richard