Posted by Peter Ceresole on November 22, 2006 at 22:18:33 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Holiday Tasks, more on posted by Prue Eckett on November 22, 2006 at 21:47:43:
I don't see the Blacketts as being rich rich - no conspicuous consumption
Well no, but as written (which is all we have to go on) they certainly appear to be from the comfortable bourgeoisie. The middle class, if you like. It was a large class, by then. AR belonged to it too- in fact except for Joe, Bill, Pete and Cook, most of his main characters did. It makes sense, as the majority of his potential readers were from that same class.
Not all, of course; the public library meant that the poor and the unemployed had a great deal of access to books. A friend of mine, Dave Bowman, unemployed in Dundee in the '30s, told me he spend a great amount of time reading in the library. He became a Communist, as so many thinking people did at the time, went to work on the railways as an engine cleaner, then as a driver (drove 'Mallard'), and ended up president of the National Union of Railwaymen. Educated, superbly, in the library. But AR's public, who generated his cash flow, were substantially children like the ones he depicted.