The Working-Class Avant-Garde hero image.
The Working-Class Avant-Garde
The idea of a working-class avant-garde may seem a contradiction to some. The avant-garde, so often an elite realm of the arts, has proved to favour those with the requisite social, cultural and economic capitals to succeed in this competitive arena. Indeed, studies such as John Carey’s divisive text, Intellectuals and the Masses, have understood the high intellectualism of the twentieth-century avant-garde to have developed in response to the improved education of the mass populace: a means to retain the divide between the masses and the elite. Its obscurity has furthermore been thought inconsistent with working-class cultures and collective ideals. This collection confronts this perceived divide by examining the avant-garde artists and writers who were born to the conditions of the working-class. The scope of figures is broad – from DH Lawrence and Robert Colquhoun, to Garth Evans and Mark E. Smith – and the definition of ‘working-class’, of ‘avant-garde’, and of ‘British’, naturally adapt within this collection according to the nation’s changing cultural, social and political landscape. This collection highlights not only the diversity of working-class voices within the twentieth-century British avant-garde, but also examines the changing conditions that provoked, influenced and inspired them.This Special Collection has been guest edited by Dr Leon Betsworth, Dr Alexandra Bickley Trott, and Dr Nick Lee.


Featured image by Dan Seddon / Unsplash


The Working-Class Avant-Garde

John Rodker on Theatre: Rethinking the Modernist Stage from London’s Jewish East End
John Rodker on Theatre: Rethinking the Modernist Stage from London’s Jewish East End

Evi Heinz

2020-02-04 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2020 • 3

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

‘Barbaric Peoples of the Earth’: The Avant-Garde and the Revolt Against Civilisation
‘Barbaric Peoples of the Earth’: The Avant-Garde and the Revolt Against Civilisation

Louis Armand

2020-04-17 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2020 • 10

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

Erotic Class Masquerade: Sex and Working-Class Dialect in D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Erotic Class Masquerade: Sex and Working-Class Dialect in D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Courtney Pina Miller

2020-04-30 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2020 • 13

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

Black Country Dionysus —Archie Hill and A Cage of Shadows
Black Country Dionysus —Archie Hill and A Cage of Shadows

Nick Lee

2020-06-18 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2020 • 23

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

Mark E. Smith, Brexit Britain and the Aesthetics and Politics of the Working Class Weird
Mark E. Smith, Brexit Britain and the Aesthetics and Politics of the Working Class Weird

David Wilkinson

2020-09-09 Volume 6 • Issue 2 • 2020 • 11

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

The Problem with Steel: Garth Evans’ Placement with the British Steel Corporation (1968–71)
The Problem with Steel: Garth Evans’ Placement with the British Steel Corporation (1968–71)

Katherine Jackson

2020-12-21 Volume 6 • Issue 2 • 2020 • 30

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

'Unity in Diversity': Centralised British Identity in the Post-War Work of Robert Colquhoun and William Scott
'Unity in Diversity': Centralised British Identity in the Post-War Work of Robert Colquhoun and William Scott

Alexandra Bickley Trott

2022-06-20 Volume 8 • Issue 1 • 2022

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

‘The Substance of Paint’: Class and Materiality in the Work of Ralph Balson
‘The Substance of Paint’: Class and Materiality in the Work of Ralph Balson

Georgina O'Donnell Cole and Shane Michael Haseman

2023-11-06 Volume 9 • Issue 2 • 2023

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

Henry Moore: Neo-Working-Classicist
Henry Moore: Neo-Working-Classicist

Robert James Sutton

2024-05-23 Volume 10 • Issue 1 • 2024

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

A Politics of Working-Class Culture and the Culture of Working-Class Politics: The Aesthetics and Activism of Amber Film and Photography Collective and the Berwick Street Film Collective
A Politics of Working-Class Culture and the Culture of Working-Class Politics: The Aesthetics and Activism of Amber Film and Photography Collective and the Berwick Street Film Collective

Jessica Williams Boyall

2024-06-24 Volume 10 • Issue 1 • 2024

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

‘To Make Britain Concrete Minded’: Peter László Peri’s London Life in Concrete (1938)
‘To Make Britain Concrete Minded’: Peter László Peri’s London Life in Concrete (1938)

Tobah J Aukland-Peck

2024-11-13 Volume 10 • Issue 2 • 2024

Also a part of:

Special Collection: The Working-Class Avant-Garde

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Special Collections