Episode 18. The Edwardian Temperament: Writers and Intellectuals

SYNOPSIS

In Britain, at the close of the nineteenth century, the displacement or secularisation of Victorian Christianity released an upsurge of intellectual ferment, which was directed towards the solving of social problems. Certain figures associated with the period, Bernard Shaw, G. K. and Cecil Chesterton, Robert Blatchford, H. G. Wells and the Fabian couple Sidney and Beatrice Webb engaged in public debate about British Society in the periodical press or pamphlets. The newly-enfranchised working class engaged in this debate which encompassed atheistic socialism and revolutionary religion. Jonathan brings his expertise in the intellectual life of the British working classes and the Edwardian cultural milieu to pen portraits of some of the major figures. He employs recent research about the female readers of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine to explore how a religious impulse can be redirected to emancipatory politics. The interview laments the disappearance of fun from contemporary political and religious debates.

GUEST

Jonathan Rose is William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey and the author of many books including The Edwardian Temperament (1986) and the ground-breaking and award-winning The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, which won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, the Longman-History Today Historical Book of the Year Prize, and the British Council Prize. First published in 2001, the book is now in its third edition. He has pioneered methods to recover the inner reading experiences of ordinary people in history.

Jonathan’s transatlantic interview with Simon Machin was recorded online on 16 August 2022.