Keith Flett, "How the Making was Made: An Historiography of The Making of the English Working Class"

Forty years on The Making of the English Working Class is still in print from Penguin in the UK. Penguin published the first paperback edition of the Making, appropriately in 1968. Victor Gollancz published the hardback edition which had a bright yellow cover. The famous cover illustration came with the paperback edition and lasted until the current printing, where it has been replaced, somewhat oddly, by a scene from late nineteenth century Tyneside. That aside, and the cover price, not much has changed.

The book has endured to be read by several generations of students and socialists. It has been published in many languages across the world and its influence, not just in history departments but amongst movements and organisations of the left, has been considerable.

This paper takes a look at what this influence has been and continues to be. It discusses how such influence can be judged and measured in the terms of Thompson's own introduction to the Making. It begins with a consideration of the moments and contexts of the publication of the hardback and paperback editions and ends by considering why the book has endured when a good deal of its imagery and thought, particularly the religious aspects, is much less familiar both to the left and to general readers than it was when Thompson wrote the book over 40 years ago now.