ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at collective self-improvement in Birmingham, England, between 1815 and 1914, and the ways in which this ideal affected culture, citizenship and self-identity. It examines the ways in which civic concerns shaped the public and private institutions of self-culture during this period. Between 1815 and 1914 in England, exhortations to pursue the duty of self-improvement echoed from the pulpit, resounded through the halls of the debating society, and leavened the pages of trade union periodicals. Self-improvement by individuals in order to better both the self and the larger community was the one constant of Victorian culture that crossed lines of class, gender and age, uniting men and women across the decades. The value of ‘improvement’ as a model of cultural exploration has been demonstrated in Democratic Subjects, where Patrick Joyce defines the general nineteenth-century impulse of self-improvement as a romance narrative. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
