Reviewed by:

• A History of British Working Class Literature ed. by John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan
• Thora Brylowe (bio)

As John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan remind us in the introduction, “working class literature is rarely received in other than partial or contingent ways,” subject to flattened (and flattening) assumptions about what it means to be working class and what it means to claim for a work the status of literature (3). This ambitious collection spans the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, and even makes a brief foray into the twenty-first century, albeit in an essay by Cole Crawford, who writes in his capacity as eighteenth-century expert on digital collections, many of which will interest ECF readers. This is a substantial book. Of its twenty-five essays, twelve are devoted to the eighteenth century and Romantic period, a number that swells to fourteen if we count Crawford’s and a brief afterword by Brian Maidment. Given space and the readership of ECF, this review attends to (roughly) the first half of the collection.

The book starts strong, with Jennie Batchelor’s closely argued call to expand the limits of working-class literature to include genres that are often dismissed as valuable merely in the register of sociological representation. She warns that in demanding of working people “good” writing, we throw in our lot with the elite category of the aesthetic and risk [End Page 280] missing the often sophisticated manipulation of literary genre wielded by labouring people. As evidence, Batchelor close reads an archive of written testimonials that were read aloud to Trustees of the Foundling Hospital. Her rich reading finds evidence of poor women’s dependence on and revision of pre-existing sentimental seduction and street ballad plots. Poor women adapted these plots to suit a complex and contradictory matrix of desperation, need for charity, and the obligation to appear as a victim rather than as the perpetrator of a violation of social expectations. Batchelor’s essay reads especially well with and against Scott McEthron’s fascinating analysis of another London institution, the Literary Fund Society, established in 1788 as a kind of stop-gap charity measure for authors whose works were determined to promote the national good. Later renamed the Royal Literary Fund, the institution neither granted annuities nor funded particular projects. Rather, its aim was to support with single lump-sum payments those authors of merit (or their survivors) who had fallen on hard times. While Batchelor’s essay is concerned with petitioners, McEthron reads his archive from the perspective of benefactors, who, given their society’s mission, had to contend with thorny questions regarding what constitutes literature worthy of charity.

Another highlight is Franca Dellarosa’s treatment of Edward Rushton’s (1756–1814) posthumously published, untitled essay on race. Rushton writes against both the popular climatological model of racial superiority and a pseudoscientific “polygenetic” justification for enslavement, an argument that held that Africans were of a different species than white Europeans. Dellarosa shows how Rushton’s careful rhetoric makes a surprisingly modern case for the constructed nature of race, which follows from his awareness of class position. Neither climate nor genetics—nature—are responsible for what ultimately amounts to the “edifice” (Rushton’s word) of race and class (121). Dellarosa takes her title, “Behold the Coromantees,” from Rushton’s 1824 poem about the plight of enslaved “Coromantees,” people of the Gold Coast, who were forced to fight in a skirmish when French privateers boarded the vessel on which they were enslaved and transported. In Rushton’s poem, the Coromantees become “the synecdoche for those ‘millions’ who are the casualties of any imperial power” (126).

Other essays fall more within the traditionally literary. Readers inter ested in the work of the lauded poet/grain-thresher Stephen Duck (1705–56) will find capable entries by Jennifer Batt and by William Christmas. Steve Van Hagen’s discussion of Ann Yearsley (1753–1806) and “the shoe-maker poet” James Woodhouse (1735–1820) takes up the way these poets wrote verses that resist and repurpose the concept...

审核人：

• 英国工人阶级文学史编。约翰·古德里奇（John Goodridge）和布里奇特·基冈（Bridget Keegan）
• 索拉·布莱洛（Thora Brylowe）

正如约翰·古德里奇和布里奇特基冈提醒我们在引进，“工人阶级的文献很少在其他收到的不是部分或偶然的方式，”受扁平（和压扁）假设约意味着什么，被工人阶级意味着什么要求对于一项工作，文学的地位（3）。这个雄心勃勃的收藏跨越了18世纪至20世纪，甚至短暂进入了21世纪，尽管作者是科尔·克劳福德（Cole Crawford）的论文，他以18世纪的数字收藏专家的身份进行了撰写，其中许多人将利息ECF读者。这是一本实质性的书。在其25篇论文中，有12篇专门讨论了18世纪和浪漫主义时期，如果我们算上Crawford的论文和Brian Maidment的简短后记，则数量增加到14篇。鉴于篇幅和ECF的读者群，此评论（大致）涉及了收藏的前半部分。

这本书开篇有力，詹妮·巴切洛（Jennie Batchelor）强烈主张扩大工人阶级文学的范围，以包括通常仅在社会学代表名册中被视作有价值的文学体裁。她警告说，在要求劳动者写出“好”字的同时，我们也将审美和冒险的精英阶层投入到自己的工作中[End Page 280]错过了劳动人民经常对文学体裁进行的复杂操纵。作为证据，Batchelor close阅读了一份书面证明档案，这些档案被大声朗读给Foundling医院的受托人。她的丰富读物找到了贫穷妇女对既有的感性诱惑和街头民谣情节的依赖和修正的证据。贫穷妇女适应了这些阴谋，以适应复杂而矛盾的绝望矩阵，对慈善的需求以及有义务成为受害者，而不是作为违反社会期望的肇事者。Batchelor的文章与Scott McEthron对伦敦另一家机构文学基金协会的引人入胜的分析相得益彰，该文献成立于1788年，是为那些决心促进国家利益的作者提供的一种权宜之计。后来改名为皇家文学基金会，该机构既不授予年金，也不资助特定项目。相反，它的目的是一次性支付那些陷入困境的优秀者（或其幸存者）一次性付款。虽然巴切洛的论文与上访者有关，但麦克埃隆从慈善者的角度阅读他的档案，鉴于慈善者的社会使命，他们不得不面对棘手的问题，即什么构成值得慈善的文学。

另一个亮点是弗朗卡·德拉罗萨（Franca Dellarosa）对爱德华·拉什顿（Edward Rushton，1756–1814年）死后发表的关于种族问题的论文的处理。拉什顿既反对种族优越的流行气候学模型，也反对伪造奴役的假科学“多基因”论证，该论据认为非洲人与欧洲白人是不同的物种。德拉罗萨（Dellarosa）展示了拉什顿（Rushton）的细心修辞如何为种族的自然构造提供了令人惊讶的现代证据，这源于他对阶级地位的认识。气候和遗传学（自然）都不对最终构成种族和阶级的“大厦”（Rushton的话）负责（121）。德拉罗萨（Dellarosa）取自拉什顿（Rushton）1824年关于黄金海岸人民被奴役的“科罗曼蒂斯”（Coromantees）的困境的诗作中的标题“ Before the Coromantees”，当法国私人登上被奴役和运输的船只时，他们被迫在一场小规模的战斗中战斗。在拉什顿的诗中，Coromantees成为“那些受任何帝国权力”（126）。

其他论文更多地属于传统文学范畴。那些对这位赞美诗人/脱粒机史蒂芬·达克（Stephen Duck，1705–56）的作品感兴趣的读者会发现珍妮弗·巴特（Jennifer Batt）和威廉·圣诞节（William Christmas）的作品。史蒂夫·范·哈根（Steve Van Hagen）对安·厄斯利（Ann Yearsley）（1753-1806）和“制鞋诗人”詹姆斯·伍德豪斯（James Woodhouse）（1735–1820）的讨论，采用了这些诗人撰写的诗歌来抵制和重新利用这一概念。