Welcome to my website on working-class memoirs and life-writing, which is part of my AHRC-funded project at the University of Manchester, on crime, homes and family life in northern England and Northern Ireland, 1918-1979.

My research draws on memoirs and autobiographical writings by working-class authors, alongside crime records and other archival sources, to explore how the relationship between the home and illegal behaviours and the implications on childhood and family life. The use of autobiographical sources has often been used successfully to produce insightful and illuminating understandings of working-class family dynamics and relationships in nineteenth century Britain. Yet memoir has been less commonly used in twentieth-century historical scholarship on gender roles, life cycles, and family life. In this blog, I want to promote the value of drawing on working-class memoirs whilst also exploring some of the challenges in using them as a historical source. This blog aims to highlight the value and richness of using life writings by working-class authors, including autobiographies, memoirs, novels, songs, and poetry, to achieve new understandings of twentieth century Britain.

I particularly focus on Liverpool, Birkenhead, Manchester, Salford, Belfast and Sheffield, but will also explore memoirs from working-class authors in other towns and cities. I am keen to draw attention to authors who tend to be less represented as memoirists, including women and Black, Asian and minority ethnic writers. If you have any recommendations for authors or titles, then I would be delighted to hear them.

You can access some of my work for free here:

‘Working-Class Women and the Buying and Selling of Stolen Goods in Urban Communities in the North West of England and Belfast, 1918–1960,’ in English Historical Review: 

https://academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ehr/cead003/7175081?login=false#406530587

Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939:

https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/urban-redevelopment-and-modernity-in-liverpool-and-manchester-1918-39/

Further reading:

Emma Griffin, Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (London, 2020).

Ben Jones, The working class in mid-twentieth-century England: Community, identity and social memory (Manchester, 2012).

Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951 (Oxford, 1998).

Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman (London, 1986).

Julie-Marie Strange Fatherhood and the British Working Class, 1865-1914 (Cambridge, 2015).

Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self: Personal Narratives and Historical Practice (London, 2018).

Selina Todd, The People: the Rise and Fall of the Working Class (London, 2015).

Further Resources:

Burnett Collection of Working Class Autobiographies

https://www.brunel.ac.uk/life/library/ArchivesAndSpecialCollections/Burnett-Archive-of-Working-Class-Autobiographies