ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the earliest attempts to establish a unified program of cultural improvement in Birmingham, as well as the barriers to their success. ‘Improvement’ and ‘self-improvement’ as guiding precepts of Victorian society changed in discrete and important ways between 1815 and 1914, most radically in the decades between 1815 and 1850. The pursuit of knowledge in Birmingham reflected the national trends, but was further affected by a level of formal municipal chaos that seriously challenged the cherished Victorian principles of individualism and voluntarism. The rhetoric of improvement underwent a substantial change over the course of the century that, even apart from the shifts in genre apparent to scholars of the periodical press, the whole notion of improvement can be divided – disaggregated – into discrete periods. The slow rhetorical shift of ‘improvement’ from universal aspiration to the arduous labor of a carefully self-selecting caste occurred across England.
