ABSTRACT
In this companion volume to Useful Toil, John Burnett has drawn extensively on over eight hundred previously unpublished manuscripts. The result is a unique record of childhood that reveals in intimate detail the trials and hard-won triumphs of nineteenth-century working-class life. Besides affording rare insights into the developing child's world of dreams, hopes and fears, they reflect a crucial period in the evolution of a family tradition; a time when, to counteract the brutalizing pressures of urbanization and industrialization, ordinary people turned to each other for support.
Children have seldom had a voice in history: these writers and their experiences take their place as part of the essential fabric of our past.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |126 pages
Childhood
chapter |49 pages
Introduction
chapter |6 pages
George Mockford
part II|90 pages
Education
chapter |40 pages
Introduction
chapter |6 pages
Frederick Hobley
chapter |5 pages
Robert Roberts
chapter |6 pages
Charles Cooper
part III|126 pages
Home and Family