The uses of shopping: Richard Hoggart goes to Woolworth's

In The Uses of Literacy and in the many autobiographical works of his later years, Richard Hoggart wrote about shops and shopping. Taking a distance from the adverse stance of the mid-century literary world to 'consumer society' in all its forms, Hoggart consistently represented himself as...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTextual practice Vol. 35; no. 12; pp. 2111 - 2127
Main Author Bowlby, Rachel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abindgon Routledge 02.12.2021
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
ageing
Argos
Autobiographical literature
Autobiographies
autobiography
coach trips
Consumer behavior
consumer culture
furniture stores
gender and shopping
history of shopping
Hoggart, Richard (1918-2014)
Literacy
Q.D. Leavis
Retail stores
Richard Hoggart
Shopping
The Uses of Literacy
Tourism
Woolworth's
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Summary:In The Uses of Literacy and in the many autobiographical works of his later years, Richard Hoggart wrote about shops and shopping. Taking a distance from the adverse stance of the mid-century literary world to 'consumer society' in all its forms, Hoggart consistently represented himself as someone who liked to shop. This essay looks at the changing shopping experiences that Hoggart described, and at the rare distinctiveness of this lifelong interest, for a man of his time and cultural places. It concentrates mainly on the shops he wrote about close to the various homes of his life, but it also briefly considers Hoggart's accounts of contrasting experiences of touristic consumption: the conviviality of the working-class coach trip, as opposed to the isolations of remote retirement travel.
ISSN:0950-236X
1470-1308
DOI:10.1080/0950236X.2020.1865675