Richard Hoggart
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Herbert Richard Hoggart (born 24 September 1918) is a British academic and public figure, whose career has covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with a special concern for British popular culture.
[edit] Career
He was born in Leeds and educated at Cockburn High School and the University of Leeds. He served with the Royal Artillery during World War II, and was demobilised as a Staff Captain. He was appointed Staff Tutor at the University of Hull from 1946 to 1959 and Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Leicester from 1959 to 1962.
The Uses of Literacy (1957)[1], his most regularly cited work was partly autobiography, and was interpreted as lamenting the loss of an authentic popular culture and as denouncing the imposition of mass culture by the culture industries.
Hoggart was an expert witness at the Lady Chatterley trial, and his argument that it was an essentially moral and "puritan" work, which merely repeated words he had heard on a building site while on his way to the court, are sometimes viewed as having had a decisive influence on the outcome of the trial.
As Professor of English at Birmingham University (1962-1973), he founded of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in 1964 and was its director until 1973. Hoggart was Assistant Director-General of UNESCO (1971-1975) and finally Warden of Goldsmiths College, University of London (1976-1984), after which he retired from formal academic life. The 'Main Building' at Goldsmiths has now been re-named the 'Richard Hoggart Building' in tribute to his contributions to the university college.
Hoggart was a member of numerous public bodies and committees, including the Albermarle Committee on Youth Services (1958-1960); the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting (1960-1962); the Arts Council of Great Britain (1976-1981); and the Statesman and Nation Publishing Company Ltd (1977-1981). He was also Chairman of the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education (1977-1983), and the Broadcasting Research Unit (1981-1991), as well as a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (1962-1988).
In recent works like The Way We Live Now (1995), regretting the decline in moral authority which he holds religion once provided, he has attacked contemporary education for its emphasis on the 'vocational' and 'cultural relativism' for its tendency to concentrate on the popular and meretricious.
He has two sons, the political journalist Simon Hoggart and the television critic Paul Hoggart, as well as a daughter Nicola. In The Chatterley Affair, a 2006 dramatisation of the 1960 trial made for the digital television channel BBC Four, he was played by actor David Tennant.
[edit] Bibliography
- Auden (Chatto, 1951) ISBN 0-7011-0762-6 biography of W. H. Auden.
- The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life (Chatto and Windus, 1957) ISBN 0-7011-0763-4 .
- Teaching Literature (Nat. Inst. of Adult Education, 1963) ISBN 0-900559-19-5.
- Higher Education and Cultural Change: A Teacher's View (Earl Grey Memorial Lecture) (Univ.Newcastle, 1966) ISBN 0-900565-62-4.
- Contemporary Cultural Studies: An Approach to the Study of Literature and Society (Univ. Birmingham, Centre for Contemp. Cult. Studies, 1969) ISBN 0-901753-03-3 paper is based on a lecture given to the annual conference of the American Association for Higher Education at Chicago on 20 March 1978.
- Speaking to Each Other: About Society v. 1 (Chatto and Windus, 1970) ISBN 0-7011-1463-0.
- Speaking to Each Other: About Literature v. 2 (Chatto and Windus, 1970) ISBN 0-7011-1514-9.
- Only Connect: On Culture and Communication (Reith Lectures) (Chatto and Windus, 1972) ISBN 0-7011-1865-2.
- After Expansion, a Time for Diversity: The Universities Into the 1990's (ACACE, 1978) ISBN 0-906436-00-1.
- An Idea and Its Servants: UNESCO from Within (Chatto and Windus, 1978) ISBN 0-7011-2371-0.
- An English Temper (Chatto and Windus, 1982) ISBN 0-7011-2581-0.
- The Future of Broadcasting by Richard Hoggart, Janet Morgan (Holmes & Meier, 1982) ISBN 0-8419-5090-3 .
- British Council and the Arts by Richard Hoggart et al (British Council, 1986) ISBN 0-86355-048-7.
- The Worst of Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression in Britain by Nigel Gray, Richard Hoggart (Barnes & Noble Imports, 1986) ISBN 0-389-20574-5.
- An Idea of Europe (Chatto and Windus, 1987) ISBN 0-7011-3244-2).
- A Local Habitation, 1918-40 (Chatto and Windus, 1988) ISBN 0-7011-3305-8.
- Liberty and Legislation (Frank Cass Publishers, 1989) ISBN 0-7146-3308-9.
- A Sort of Clowning: Life and Times, 1940-59 (Chatto and Windus, 1990) ISBN 0-7011-3607-3 first volume of Hoggart's "Life and Times" described his working-class childhood in Leeds.
- An Imagined Life: Life and Times 1959-91 (Chatto and Windus, 1992) ISBN 0-7011-4015-1).
- Townscape with Figures: Farnham - Portrait of an English Town (Chatto and Windus, 1994) ISBN 0-7011-6138-8.
- A Measured Life: The Times and Places of an Orphaned Intellectual (Transaction Publishers, 1994) ISBN 1-56000-135-6.
- The Way We Live Now: Dilemmas in Contemporary Culture (Chatto and Windus, 1995) ISBN 0-7011-6501-4 republished as The Tyranny of Relativism: Culture and Politics in Contemporary English Society (Transaction Publishers, 1997) ISBN 1-56000-953-5.
- First and Last Things: The Uses of Old Age (Aurum Press, 1999) ISBN 1-85410-660-0.
- Between Two Worlds: Essays, 1978-1999 (Aurum Press, 2001) ISBN 1-85410-782-8.
- Between Two Worlds: Politics, Anti-Politics, and the Unpolitical (Transaction Publishers, 2002) ISBN 0-7658-0097-7.
- Everyday Language and Everyday Life (Transaction Publishers, 2003) ISBN 0-7658-0176-0.
- Mass Media in a Mass Society: Myth and Reality (Continuum International Publishing Group - Academi, 2004) ISBN 0-8264-7285-0.
