It can be hard to know where to start if you're getting into classic literature. ilbusca/Getty Images
There is a fashionable modern belief that intellectual life belongs to latte drinkers and university graduates.
Jonathan Rose, in The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, presents a less flattering alternative. The real intellectual heavy lifting in 19th-century Britain was being done by people covered in coal dust.
Miners, Mill Workers, Cabinet Makers Were the Engines of Culture
After 14 hours underground, they didn’t collapse onto sofas; they picked up Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, and even Plato—with a seriousness that makes our modern “to be read” piles look like decoration.
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