scholarly journals “Thief in the Name of Kidd”: Unscrupulous Opportunism and Cheap Print in Late Regency London

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-44
Author(s):  
Brian Maidment
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Illustrated Books ◽  
Entrepreneurial Opportunities ◽  
Considerable Controversy ◽  
Chaotic Nature ◽  
Cheap Print

William Kidd saw himself as a struggling small publisher of illustrated books operating during the 1830s in a marketplace that favoured large scale firms. His response to his perceived disadvantages was twofold. In seeking to reach a rapidly expanding cohort of leisure-based readers, Kidd deployed aggressive marketing policies that frequently sailed close to the law and generated considerable controversy. He was also less than honest about just who had written or illustrated his books. At the same time, he initiated new genres of relatively cheap illustrated publications based on the recreational interest and habits of an emerging lower middle class and artisan reading public. In particular, he took advantage of the wood engraving as a cheap reprographic medium, and employed highly capable draughtsmen such as Robert Cruikshank, Robert Seymour and George Bonner to illustrate his books and pamphlets. His pocket guides to British seaside resorts, his development of the illustrated reprints known as jeu d’esprit or Facetiae and his packaging up of sayings, mottos and nuggets of information into small format gatherings all show a lively minded and innovative response to the rapidly changing literary marketplace. Kidd’s career suggests both the legally chaotic nature of the literary marketplace and the entrepreneurial opportunities offered to a shrewd if unscrupulous publisher in late Regency London.

Chicago’s Immigrant Working Class and the Rise of Urban Populism, 1867–73

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Jentz ◽  
Richard Schneirov
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Control Measure ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Fire Control ◽  
Real Property ◽  
Labor Reform ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
The City

This chapter examines Chicago's immigrant working class and the rise of urban populism. In January 1872—three months after the Great Fire—Anton Hesing, Chicago's German political boss, organized a protest against the city government's effort to ban new wooden housing in the city as a fire control measure. For Hesing, the fight against the “fire limits” was a battle against the proletarianization of Chicago's workers, whose distinctive independent status was based on the ownership of real property and a house. He fought to preserve a particular kind of working class independent of large-scale capital, and free of alien radicalism, particularly socialism. In leading the movement against the fire limits, Hesing then became the chief architect of urban populism in the city. With labor reform marginalized, urban populism helped politicize the city's immigrant skilled workers and lower middle class.

‘The crowd would have it that I was a hero’: populism, New Humour and the male clerk in Marsh’s Sam Briggs adventures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mackenzie Bartlett
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
First World War ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
World War ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Suburban Sprawl ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Economic Position ◽  
First World

This chapter situates the adventures of Marsh’s male clerk Sam Briggs (1904–1915) within the context of the ‘New Humour’ of the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods, in order to explore the intersections between populism, comedy and mass readership at the turn of the twentieth century. Specifically, the chapter examines how Marsh tapped into the burgeoning lower-middle-class literary marketplace by deploying slapstick, satire and farce to interrogate some of the most pressing issues of his day, including the expansion of London and the effects of suburban sprawl, the ambiguous social and economic position of the male clerk, the crisis in masculinity, the contentious debates about evolution and degeneration, the rapid advancements in industry and technology and the profound consequences of the First World War.

The Quotidian Labour of High Tech: Innovation and Ordinary Work in Shenzhen

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-236
Author(s):  
Hallam Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Small Enterprises ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Start Ups ◽  
Human Networks

The literature on the production of high-tech electronics in China—following a Silicon Valley model—focuses on either large-scale manufacturing or the role of start-ups and ‘makers’. The aim of this article is to turn to other kinds of spaces and work in the production of high-tech electronics. I focus here on three kinds of spaces in Shenzhen: the Huaqiangbei electronics market, small-scale factories and industrial design workshops. The electronics economy depends critically not just on ‘makers’ but on all kinds of other labour. In particular, it depends on lower middle-class and low-class work—devices made by small factories and shops, sold by small enterprises and designed for the less wealthy, especially in developing countries. The human networks that connect these individuals are critical to the size, speed and density of the markets, allowing devices to be built and shipped rapidly, for parts and customers to be available.

scholarly journals ‘Introductions by eminent writers’: T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf in the Oxford World’s Classics Series

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Jaillant
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Old English ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Self ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Academic System ◽  
The Moonstone ◽  
Oxford University Press

This chapter focuses on the introductions that T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf wrote for the Oxford World’s Classics editions of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (both published in 1928). Oxford University Press, whose London branch bought the World’s Classics from Grant Richards in 1905, was known for its Bibles and scholarly works, not for literary experimentation. So why would such a staid publisher include an introduction by Eliot, a writer with “a sustained interest in rotting orifices”? Why would a series associated with an old English university value the opinion of Woolf, who repeatedly criticised the patriarchal structure of the academic system? This chapter argues that, by the late 1920s, Woolf and Eliot had become well-known names recognisable by the lower middle class, the self-educated and other readers of the World’s Classics. They lent their growing reputation to boost sales of reprints, and in turn, they benefited from their association with a large-scale publishing enterprise (including access to a wide American readership). The World’s Classics contributed to transforming the image of these modernist writers from infamous avant-gardists to members of the artistic establishment.

scholarly journals Between field and home: notes from the balcony

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110205
Author(s):  
Shruti Ragavan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Dairy Farms ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Village ◽  
The City

Balconies, windows and terraces have come to be identified as spaces with newfound meaning over the past year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and concomitant lockdowns. There was not only a marked increase in the use of these spaces, but more importantly a difference in the very nature of this use since March 2020. It is keeping this latter point in mind, that I make an attempt to understand the spatial mobilities afforded by the balcony in the area of ethnographic research. The street overlooking my balcony, situated amidst an urban village in the city of Delhi – one of my field sites, is composed of middle and lower-middle class residents, dairy farms and farmers, bovines and other nonhumans. In this note, through ethnographic observations, I reflect upon the balcony as constituting that liminal space between ‘field’ and ‘home’, as well as, as a spatial framing device which conditions and affects our observations and interactions. This is explored by examining two elements – the gendered nature of the space, and the notion of ‘distance and proximity’, through personal narratives of engaging-with the field, and subjects-objects of study in the city.

Sex in the City that Peter Built: The Demimonde and Sociability in Mid-Eighteenth Century St. Petersburg

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-930
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The City

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of “indecency” in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine “sexual underworld.” Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged “parties” at the focus of this article that arguably served as a “training ground” for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these “parties” provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of “westernization.”

Peran UMKM Dalam Mengurangi Tingkat Pengangguran Masyarakat dan Strategi UMKM Ditengah Pandemi Covid-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-107
Author(s):  
Nida Alfi Nur Ilmi
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Unemployment Rate ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Financial Assistance ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
The Government

ABSTRACT This paper tries to explain and describe the position of UMKM in the Kepuh, Boyolangu Village, Banyuwangi, as an effort to reduce the unemployment rate, especially in the lower middle class and to see how the strategy of the UMKM founders in maintaining their position in all conditions. So it is hoped that readers can find out and analyze UMKM within the scope of the region as an effort to minimize unemployment and increase living standards. This paper use qualitative research method with a qualitative descriptive approach. Establishing UMKM is certainly not an easy thing, because the large number of workers does not guarantee UMKM, who is determined by the appropriate expertise and strategy. In addition, the Government has not been maximally perfect in overcoming problems and financial assistance for community UMKM which in reality is able to absorb many new workers, and has an impact on reducing the unemployment rate.

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