5 The Social History of English Writers

I

We argue a good deal about the effects on literature of the social origins of writers, their form of education, their ways of getting a living and the kinds of audience they expect and get. Theoretical questions, often very difficult, are of course involved in this argument, but the most obvious difficulty is the lack of any outline of facts by which some of the theoretical principles could be tested. There are occasional agitated debates in which people quote lists at each other, to prove their own version of the origins and affiliations of valued writers. Yet the principle of selection, in these lists, is usually quite obviously related to the particular thesis. We seem to need an outline of such facts based on a standard list, and then to restart the argument from there. I have attempted such an outline, based on the index of the Oxford Introduction to English Literature, and with the Dictionary of National Biography as main authority. Ideally, of course, we need a much more extensive piece of research, but this examination of nearly 350 writers, born between 1470 and 1920, may perhaps serve as a preliminary sketch. The questions asked are in three categories: social origin; kind of education; method of living. For social origin, eight reasonably continuous kinds of family, based on the economic and social standing of the father, have been listed: nobility, gentry, professional men, merchants, tradesmen, farmers, craftsmen and labourers. For education, four kinds of schooling have been listed: national grammar (since the 1860s called ‘public schools’), local grammar, dissenting academy, and home or private. For universities, the traditional division between Oxford and Cambridge, and others, has been used. For method of living, three general categories have been used, to indicate main source of income: independent (inherited or propertied); employed (in work other than that for which the writer is known); and vocational (main income from work in the field in which the writer is known). A good deal of overlapping has been found, especially in the last category, and this has been allowed for. It is obvious, also, of course, that kinds of family, and their relativc importance in the society, have varied historically, and that this must be remembered as the significance of origin is assessed. In spite of these difficulties, I think the general outline that emerges may be useful.

The historical periods used have been half-centuries. For several reasons, including the terminal date, the actual periods used are 1480–1530; 1530–80; 1580–1630; 1630–80; 1680–1730; 1730–80; 1780–1830; 1830–80; 1880–1930. As it has turned out, I think these periods are more relevant to the actual history of literature than any other regular division. The assignment to periods has been on the basis of the tenth year after the particular writer’s birth, since this is obviously a crucial age in one of the decisive factors – education. This also means that no writers born later than 1920 have been included, and for such writers there is of course as yet no reasonably standard list.

In the first period studied, from 1480 to 1530, we are looking at the men who created Tudor literature. Of the twenty-one writers listed, the origins of three are uncertain. Of the remaining eighteen, eleven came from the nobility and gentry (three and eight respectively) and four from professional families closely related to the gentry. Only three are known to come from outside these classes: two from farming and one from a craftsman’s family. The homogeneity of this predominantly gentry culture was greatly advanced by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to which seventeen are known to have gone. Of the four exceptions, one is a nobleman, two as Scots went to Scottish universities, and one is not recorded. Schooling is less unified, in terms of institutions: of the fourteen for whom there are records four went away to national grammar schools, five went to local grammar schools and five were educated at home. In content, the literature of the period has a high proportion of theological and educational writing, and it is only in relation to this emphasis that we find as many as ten living by the vocation for which they are known, mainly in church and university. Three vary, in different periods of their lives, between vocation and employment, and six are mainly employed. The close inter-connexion of institutions and families is shown in kinds of employment: service at court or as tutor in a royal or noble family. Only two seem to have been wholly independent, though in many cases there was supplementary family income from property.

In the next period, from 1530 to 1580, we are looking at the men who created Elizabethan literature. Of thirty-eight writers, the origins of two are uncertain. Of the remaining thirty-six, fifteen are from the nobility and gentry (three and twelve respectively), and nine are from professional families, now less regularly connected with the gentry. The appearance of twelve from the families of merchants, tradesmen and craftsmen (four, three and five respectively) marks an important change. Yet the importance of Oxford and Cambridge, as linking institutions, is still great. Of the thirty-six for whom there are records, twenty-seven went to Oxford and Cambridge. Two attended universities abroad, and seven (including one nobleman and one page at court) attended no university, three of these being the sons of tradesmen or craftsmen. Of the nineteen for whom schooling is recorded, eight went away to national grammar schools, nine went to local grammar schools and two were educated at home and court. In method of living, seven were wholly independent, two combined substantial independence with service at court and eleven were employed, away from their vocation as writers, in court, church, law, university and as secretary or tutor in a noble family. Some of the earlier vocational basis remains, in the church, but this period saw the emergence of a class of professional writers: the first generation of Elizabethan dramatists, centred on the London theatres. The ordinary earlier ties between drama and church or academic institution had been largely replaced by the new theatres. It is significant that almost all these dramatists came from the newly represented classes: either professional families not related to the gentry, or tradesmen and craftsmen. This is the radically new element, while in the rest of the national literature the distribution of content and origins is very much that of the earlier Tudor period.

In the next period, 1580–1630, we are looking at the Jacobean dramatists, the metaphysical poets, and the Cavalier and Puritan poets, together with political theorists up to Hobbes. Of the thirty-three writers listed, the origins of three are uncertain. Of the remaining thirty, there are nine from the gentry, thirteen from professional families, one from a merchant family, four from trade, two from farming and one from the family of a craftsman. The continued importance of Oxford and Cambridge as linking institutions is marked: twenty-eight of the thirty for whom there is information went to these universities. Twelve went away to national grammar schools, nine to local grammar schools and three were educated at home or at court. It is notable, in many individual careers, that meeting at university was a critical factor in the lives of many of the poorer men. There was some evidence of this in the previous half-century also. The result is a good deal of social mobility once Oxford or Cambridge has been reached. In method of life, the dramatists can still follow their vocation in the theatres (it is perhaps interesting that their social origins are rather different from the Elizabethan generation, with a shift back towards the gentry and professional families related to the gentry, and a marked decline in those coming from the merchant-tradesman-craftsman group). More writers are now employed, away from their vocation as writers, both in the older institutions and, with a significant increase, as secretary or tutor in a noble family of whom a member has been met at university. Seven of the thirty-three are wholly independent, and there is a decline in the number of those based on the church.

In the next period, 1630–80, we are looking mainly at Restoration writers, and at some of the early Augustans. Of the twenty-two writers listed, the origins of twenty-one are known. In the smaller total, there is a proportionate swing back towards the nobility and gentry, who provide nine representatives (two and seven respectively). Seven are from professional families, three (one of whom did not publish until the eighteenth century) from trade and two (one of them Bunyan) from craftsmen. It is both a more limited and a more clearly class-based culture than that which preceded it. The importance of Oxford and Cambridge is still evident, with these universities taking thirteen of the twenty-one for whom there is information. Three others went to Irish and one to a French university, while two of the four remaining are noblemen, and two poor. Of the eighteen for whom there is information on schooling, six went away to national grammar schools, seven went to local grammar schools, one went to a dissenting academy and four were educated at home. In method of living, the smaller number of dramatists were still largely based on the fewer theatres, and these account for most of the ten who lived by their vocation. Eight were employed, significantly often now in government service, while four were wholly independent.

In the next period, 1680–1730, we are looking at the Augustans and the mid-eighteenth-century novelists, poets, dramatists and philosophers. On the whole, between about 1660 and the 1730s there had been a slowing-down in the general expansion of the national literature, and proportionately less writers are recorded. The period 1680–1730 shows a marked change in social origins, with thirteen out of nineteen writers listed coming from professional families of a mainly middle-class kind, only two from the nobility and gentry, and four (one, two, one) from the merchants, tradesmen and craftsmen. The relative importance of Scots and Irish is much higher, and for the first time less than half those listed (eight out of nineteen) went to Oxford or Cambridge. Of those for whom there is information on schooling, six went away to national grammar schools, nine went to local grammar schools and two were educated at home. In method of living, only two of these writers were wholly independent. It was becoming possible for some writers to live wholly, if often inadequately, by their profession, and the emergence of a class of professional writers, many of them hacks, was noted in the period. Most of the writers we now read combined authorship with some form of employment, normally in the professions (including the church but less often than in earlier periods) and in some cases in the old form of service as secretary or tutor. More government posts were also becoming available. Money through marriage is notable in a number of cases. This was a period of patronage, and of the emergence alongside it of a more organised bookselling market. The ordinary career of a good writer was exceptionally uneven, with irregular income from a variety of sources, and with a good deal of hand-to-mouth living until some favourable opportunity, either in patronage or from the market, turned up. There is also a distinct sense of emerging classes of writers, with a division between those following traditional forms usually with some patronage, and those adapting to the new market. But in several careers this division was blurred, for the whole period is one of overlapping of different systems and forms.

In the next period, 1730–80, we are looking at late-eighteenth-century writers and some of the first generation of Romantic writers. The predominance of writers from professional families continues, with eleven out of twenty-five listed. Only two are from the nobility, and none from the gentry. The new element is the greater representation from tradesmen, farmers and craftsmen, who between them supply eleven (four, four, three), an equal number with the professions. One is from a merchant’s family. The relative importance of Scots and Irish continues. Again, as in the earlier period, the significance of Oxford and Cambridge is less: now only eight, out of twenty-five, went to either university. Four went to Irish or Scottish universities, but thirteen went to no university. In schooling, four went to national grammar schools, eight to local English grammar schools, five to Scottish or Irish schools, and three (including two women) were educated at home (the third is Cobbett, who was really self-educated). Some distinctly new ways of thinking and feeling seem to enter with the greater representation from the farmers and craftsmen (Burns, Cobbett, Blake, Paine). In method of living, three were wholly independent. There was still some patronage, and some writers who went to national grammar schools made influential friends there, who later helped them in various ways. There was the usual reliance on other professional employment, in the church, law and medicine, and the importance of government posts made itself further felt. But the predominant impression of the period is one of the great poverty of writers, apparent in the preceding period but now affecting more men. There was just enough of a bookselling market, and associated hack work, to offer the possibility of living by writing, but those without any private income and with no influential friends, who tried it, were often exceptionally poor and exposed.

In the next period, 1780–1830, we are looking at the second generation of Romantic writers and at the early and mid-Victorians. The most decisive fact is that the expansion of the national literature, partly if unevenly resumed in the eighteenth century, is now very marked. In social origin, the largest single group of these writers came from professional families: twenty-five out of fifty-seven. One came from the nobility, and eight from the gentry. Nine came from the families of merchants. From the families of tradesmen, craftsmen, poor farmers and labourers came thirteen (five, five, two, one). In terms of new ways of thinking, mainly on social issues, the contribution of this last group was especially distinguished. The emergence of a significant number of important women writers is particularly notable.

Of the fifty-two for whom there is information on schooling, eighteen went to national grammar schools, fourteen to English local grammar schools, four to Scottish or Irish schools, and sixteen (including eight women) were educated, in many cases inadequately, at home. The importance of Oxford and Cambridge revived to some extent, with twenty-four entrants out of fifty-seven. Seven went to Scottish or Irish universities, one to London and one to a French Catholic university. Looking over the whole list, it is noticeable that few writers follow any standardised route. Only ten of the fifty-seven went from the gentry or a professional family to a national grammar school and then Oxford or Cambridge. In method of life there was a marked change, due to improvements in the bookselling market and in particular to the greatly increased importance and stability of magazines. Where previously the Elizabethan theatre, or in a looser form the eighteenth-century coffee-house, had served as institutions through which professional writers lived and made contact, there was now an evident concentration around magazines, in London and Edinburgh, and in particular the emergence of a new kind of established ‘literary London’. Some nine of the fifty-seven were wholly independent in income, but many more became comfortably established as professional writers, not only through books, but through articles, reviewing, editing, travel-writing and of course serial publication in the magazines. Far fewer writers, proportionately, were employed quite away from their work as writers. Of those who were, government service and education were the principal occupations, with some in the church and the law. For writers at ease in the world of novels and magazines, the period was comfortable, but it is noticeable that the poets either had independent incomes or were dependent on help and patronage, or, if these failed, were as poor as their eighteenth-century predecessors. Among Victorian novelists, the contribution of women and of men from the poorer social groups is especially marked.

In the next period, 1830–80, we are looking at writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The dominant impression is of a more highly organised upper-middle class making the major contribution. There are no writers listed from the nobility, but from the gentry and merchant and professional families, now commonly closely related, there are no less than forty-four out of fifty-three (seven, six, thirty-one). The remaining nine came from the families of tradesmen and craftsmen. This is a notably less varied social origin, to the disadvantage of the poorer groups, than in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. In schooling, nineteen went to national grammar schools, sixteen to English local grammar schools, seven to local Scottish and Irish schools, two to dissenting academies, and seven were otherwise educated (two women and two men adequately at home, the others inadequately). The relative importance of Oxford and Cambridge is maintained, with twenty-four out of the fifty-three listed. Nine went to Scottish or Irish universities, six to other English universities and fourteen to no university. Six were independent in method of living, and eight were employed away from the work by which they are known. The vocational basis, either in the expanded market for books and magazines, or in relevant institutions such as universities, is very clear in the period. The imaginative writers are more varied in every respect than the philosophers and historians, who in majority follow a typical career of professional family, national grammar school and Oxford or Cambridge.

In the final period, 1880–1930, we are looking mainly at the writers of the inter-war years, and at contemporary writers born before 1920. In social origins, the pattern is basically similar to that of the previous period, with one from the nobility, and thirty-nine out of fifty-three from the often closely related gentry and merchant and professional families (seven, two, thirty). The importance of professional families as the largest single source is marked as in earlier periods. From the families of tradesmen, farmers, craftsmen and labourers there are thirteen of the fifty-three listed (five, two, four and two). There are notable differences in the educational pattern, with the first modern majority from the national grammar (now ‘public’) schools: thirty-two out of fifty-three. Eight went to English local grammar schools, two to private schools, four to elementary schools only, and four (including two women) were educated at home. Thirty-two went to Oxford or Cambridge, one to an Irish university, four to other English universities, one to a German university and fifteen to no university. The typical career, noted in the earlier period for historians and philosophers, is now more generally spread: professional family, public school, Oxford or Cambridge. Four of the fifty-three had substantial independent means, three were employed away from the work by which they are known, and the majority had a fairly clear vocational basis, in the world of books, magazines and related institutions.

We can at present take this factual inquiry no further, since there is no standard list for writers born since 1920. It has been generally assumed that there has been some shift in the years since 1945 from the regular majority pattern of the earlier period. A rough check, on the basis of a personal list of writers of this age who have attracted particular attention, indeed shows a more varied social origin (six out of twelve from the families of tradesmen and clerical and industrial workers), a different pattern of schooling (two public school, seven local grammar school, three other local authority schools), a continuing relative importance of Oxford and Cambridge (seven out of twelve) and a vocational pattern divided between full-time professional writing and university English teaching. Too much weight should not be given to these figures, since the list is necessarily highly selective, and covers writers who still have much of their work to do, while certainly neglecting others who must eventually be included. But so far as they go, they confirm the impression of some change.

II

The evidence of this whole inquiry is obviously limited in value, and will need to be checked and amplified by longer research. So far as it goes, however, I find it interesting, even when it only confirms general impressions of the writers of a period gained by other means. Looking through the body of detail, it is impossible to accept the extreme view, still held by some people, that the growth of a national literature is wholly autonomous, unaffected by variations in institutions, audiences, social and educational opportunity, and available methods of living. Indeed such a view is so unreasonable that it would probably not be held at all if the converse were not often stated in a similarly extreme and untenable way. Thus the social origins and educational history of writers clearly often influence their work, but to think primarily of social classes and institutions, and then of individuals as merely their representatives, is wholly misleading. Not only, in certain important cases, do individuals deviate from their group of origin, but also the whole process of individual growth is more complicated than any simple assignment to groups would indicate. Equally, however, since the individual grows in relation to a learned pattern, which is of social significance, the assumption of autonomous creation – the creative individual acting wholly freely – is misleading and naïve.

It is worth looking briefly through the evidence to see what kinds of correlation between a society and its literature are reasonable. The relation of Tudor literature to its social context seems quite clear, and the broadening into Elizabethan literature seems certainly connected with the greater social variety evidenced in its writers. It is difficult to say how far this should be taken, but there seems a possible relation between the majority origin of the Elizabethan dramatists in rising social groups, and the swing back from this in their Jacobean and Caroline successors. The change in the character of the drama over these years, the swingback from a popular drama to a more socially limited drama, follows this line. Moreover, the line is continued into the period of the frankly class-based Restoration theatre. Again, in the early eighteenth century, there is a clear correlation between the majority of writers from professional and trading families and the new forms and modes of what has often been described as a middle-class literature. The later eighteenth century shows no such simple correlation. It is socially a very varied period for writers, but the outstanding literary development, that of Romantic poetry, shows no consistent relation with the social history of its creators. Indeed it is a movement in which all social classes, educational patterns and methods of life are represented, often with marked individual variations from inherited social norms; perhaps the only factor that is significant, since this would certainly have a relation with part of the character of the movement. The importance of new social groups in much of the most original social thinking of the nineteenth century, and of these groups and of women in the major period of the Victorian novel, is a positive correlation. In the period between about 1879 and 1950 perhaps the most significant correlation is negative. It has been widely noted that an unusual proportion of the important imaginative literature of these years was written by people outside the majority English pattern. This had been true to some extent of the Victorian novel, but in these later years the relative importance of writers from abroad or from minority groups, as well as of women, is marked. Hardy, James, Shaw, Synge, Yeats, Eliot, Conrad, Lawrence, O’Casey, Joyce, Thomas compose a short list of some significance, not in the fact that, with the exception of the Irish, any particular minority is noticeable, but that difficult questions are raised about the majority pattern, the normal English mode, which certainly seems, in this period, relatively uncreative. Since judgements of quality are involved here, the analysis is not simple, but it seems to me there is some evidence of a social and imaginative narrowing which can be related to the emergence of a more standard social history of the principal contributors. The emergence of certain new elements in mood and content in more recent years might then be factually related to the limited variations which seem to have occurred in this standard pattern.

There is no single relation between the nature of a society and the character of its literature, but there are significant and possibly significant relations which seem to vary with the actual history. Since social origins have been factually related, in varying ways, both to educational opportunity and to methods of life which affect a writer’s following his vocation, it can be said that this complex is of permanent significance, and has visibly affected parts of our literary development. Yet the emphasis should not fall only on origins. The character of literature is also visibly affected, in varying ways, by the nature of the communication system and by the changing character of audiences. When we see the important emergence of writers from a new social group, we must look not only at them, but at the new institutions and forms created by the wider social group to which they belong. The Elizabethan theatre is an exceptionally complex example, since as an institution it was largely created by individual middle-class speculators, and was supplied with plays by writers from largely middle-class and trading and artisan families, yet in fact was steadily opposed by the commercial middle class and, though serving popular audiences, survived through the protection of the court and the nobility. This very protection, later, steadily narrowed both drama and audiences, until in the Restoration a very narrow class was setting the dominant tone. The formation in the eighteenth century of an organised middle-class audience can be seen as in part due to certain writers from the same social group, but also, and perhaps mainly, as an independent formation which then drew these writers to it and gave them their opportunity. The expansion and further organisation of this middle-class audience can be seen to have continued until the late nineteenth century, drawing in new writers from varied social origins but giving them, through its majority institutions, a general homogeneity. This general situation has persisted, but already in the nineteenth century there were signs of a break, with individuals deviating from the majority patterns, and, by the end of the century, a distinct and organised minority deviation. The social situation of literature in the twentieth century has been largely the interaction of continuing majority patterns, with an increasingly standard route into them, and this marked dissenting minority, which has tended to support and value writers from outside the majority pattern, and to provide an alternative outlet and affiliation for dissenting members of the majority groups. If we compare the social basis of literature between 1850 and 1870 and that between 1919 and 1939 we find in both cases an organised middle-class reading public as the major element, but whereas in the earlier period the literature was comparatively homogeneous, with most of its creators drawn from the same social group as the actual public, in the later period there is evidence of two publics, a majority and a minority, the former continuing the earlier type of relationship, the latter, while attracting individual dissenters, finding its major figures from outside, either from another culture or from other social groups. A large part of important modern literature – many novels, many plays, almost all poetry – has been communicated through the institutions of this minority public, in sharp contrast with the mid-Victorian situation, where the majority institutions were still closely related to the most important work of the time. The appearance of contributors from new social groups within the culture, which has attracted attention in recent years, has been normally through the institutions of this minority. Most of the new writers from the families of clerical and industrial workers are in fact being read not by the social groups from which they come, but by the dissident middle class. The expanding audience for novels and plays certainly includes members of new social groups, but in general they are simply being absorbed into the existing majority public. The danger of this situation is that the minority public may soon be the only identifiable group with an evident and particular social affiliation – defined largely through university education. There is some evidence that the separation of the majority public from its most creative members is leaving a cultural vacuum easily penetrated from outside. The rapid Americanisation of most of the popular art forms can be understood in these terms, at a time when so much of the best English art and thinking is closely related to an identifiable social minority which, with a limited educational system, most British people have no real chance of entering.

Thus the relations between literature and society can be seen to vary considerably, in changing historical situations. As a society changes, its literature changes, though often in unexpected ways, for it is a part of social growth and not simply its reflection. At times, a rising social group will create new institutions which, as it were, release its own writers. At other times, writers from new social groups will simply make their way into existing institutions, and work largely within their terms. This is the important theoretical context for the discussion of mobility, of which we have heard so much in our own generation. It is significant that mobility is now normally discussed primarily in individual terms and that the writer is so often taken as an example: he, like other artists, may be born anywhere, and can move, as an individual, very rapidly through the whole society. But in fact there are two major kinds of mobility: the individual career, which writers have often exemplified, and the rise of a whole social group, which creates new institutions and sometimes, as in the early eighteenth century, brings its writers with it. The problems of mobility can never be adequately discussed unless this distinction is made. Those affecting writers, in our own day, are primarily the result of a combination of individual mobility with the relative stability of institutions. This can be seen in the many literary works which take contemporary mobility as theme. At the end of the eighteenth century, Godwin, in Caleb Williams, produced an early example of such a career, with individual mobility very limited and with the institutions in relation to which it operated both powerful and harsh. Stendhal, in Scarlet and Black, took the same situation much further, ending with the individual being destroyed, first in character and then actually, instead of being merely hunted down to a compromise. The usual implication of Victorian treatments of this theme was (in default of one or other of the several magical solutions) that of control: the terms of origin must be basically respected, or the individual would degenerate. Hardy’s protest, in Jude the Obscure, leaves the very effort hopeless. Lawrence introduced the new situation: the rapid if resentful rise, characteristically through art, into the dissident minority culture, but then, finally, into exile. In our own period, the characteristic pattern has been that of the more freely mobile individual mocking or raging at the institutions which are made available for him to join, or else, if he acquiesces, suffering rapid personal deterioration (cf. Lucky Jim, Look Back in Anger, Room at the Top). There is a continuing sense of deadlock, and much of the experience generated within it seems sterile. This is because the terms of mobility, thus conceived, are hopelessly limited. The combination of individual mobility with the stability of institutions and ways of thinking leads to this deadlock inevitably. And the experience of artists and intellectuals is then particularly misleading, for while such experience records particular local tensions, much of the real experience of mobility, in our own time, is that of whole social groups moving into new ways of life: not only the individual rising, but the society changing. This latter experience is, however, very difficult to negotiate while the institutions towards which writers and thinkers are attracted retain their limited social reference, and while new groups have been relatively unsuccessful in creating their own cultural institutions. There is an obvious danger of the advantage of individual writers drawn from more varied social origins being limited or nullified by their absorption into pre-existing standard patterns (as obviously now in the system of higher education) or by their concentration on fighting these patterns, rather than finding or helping to create new patterns. The problems of individual mobility have in fact been worked through to the point where the definition of mobility in individual terms can be plainly seen as inadequate. The whole society is moving, and the most urgent issue is the creation of new and relevant institutions.

The good writer may be born anywhere, and the evidence is that the pattern of his social development can be very varied, and that there may be danger in attempting to standardise it. But this does not mean that his development is autonomous or that what the society does, by way of institutions and forms of communication, will fail to affect him. What a society can properly do is revise and extend its institutions, first in education, second in means of communication, until these have an effective general relation with the real structure of the society, so that both writers and audiences can come through in their own terms. We are so far from this, in our own society, that we can say with certainty that the social history of writers which we have been tracing will continue to change.