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Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy (1957) is one of the seminal texts of the mid-twentieth century. The book, originally entitled The Abuse of Literacy, celebrates in Part I the resilient culture of working-class people but offers in Part II a powerful critique of the specious populism and banality of popular newspapers and magazines, the false palliness of adverts, and the literary flatness and moral emptiness of many popular novels. The book struck an immediate chord: it was widely reviewed in the popular press and discussed on the radio.¹ The book had a profound influence on perceptions of the working class both inside and beyond the academy in the UK, the USA and Australia, and was translated into French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese.² It had a massive impact far beyond the academy, reaching a wide readership and influencing a generation of novelists and playwrights.³The Uses of Literacy spoke from and to the climate of post-war questioning of cultural elitism. The book had an enormous impact: in part for the intrinsic interest, quality and originality of its argument, and in part because of its bearings on wider discussions about the pace and direction of post-war social change. As Stuart Hall argues in this volume, Hoggart's argument takes its bearings from the broader debate about post-war affluence and what came to be known as working-class "embourgeoisement".

DOI: 10.1057/9780230583313_1

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