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Richard Hoggart | |
|---|---|
| Born | Herbert Richard Hoggart (1918-09-24)24 September 1918 Potternewton,Leeds, England |
| Died | 10 April 2014(2014-04-10) (aged 95) London, England |
| Education | University of Leeds |
| Occupation | Academic |
| Children | 3, includingSimon &Paul |
Herbert Richard HoggartFRSL (24 September 1918 – 10 April 2014) was an English academic whose career covered the fields of sociology,English literature andcultural studies, with emphasis onBritish popular culture.
Hoggart was born in thePotternewton area ofLeeds, one of three children in an impoverished family. His father, Tom Longfellow Hoggart (1880–1922), the son of a boilermaker, was a regular infantry soldier and housepainter who died ofbrucellosis when Hoggart was a year old, and his mother Adeline died of a chest illness when he was eight.[1] He grew up with his grandmother inHunslet, and was encouraged in his education by an aunt. Emulating his elder brother, Tom, the first of the family to go to a grammar school,[2] he gained a place atCockburn High School which was agrammar school, after his headmaster requested that the education authority reread his scholarship examination essay. He then won a scholarship to study English at theUniversity of Leeds, where he graduated with a first class degree.[3] He served with theRoyal Artillery duringWorld War II and was discharged as a staff captain.[2]
He was a staff tutor at theUniversity of Hull from 1946 to 1959, and published his first book, a study ofW. H. Auden's poetry, in 1951. His major work,The Uses of Literacy, was published in 1957. Partly autobiography, the volume was interpreted as lamenting the loss of an authentic working classpopular culture in Britain, and denouncing the imposition of a mass culture through advertising, media andAmericanisation.
He became Senior Lecturer in English at theUniversity of Leicester from 1959 to 1962. Hoggart was an expert witness at theLady Chatterley trial in 1960, and his argument that it was an essentially moral and "puritan" work, which merely repeated words he had heard on a building site on his way to the court,[4] is sometimes viewed as having had a decisive influence on the outcome of the trial.
While Professor of English atBirmingham University between 1962 and 1973, he founded the institution'sCentre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in 1964 and was its director until 1969. Hoggart was Assistant Director-General ofUNESCO (1971–1975) and finally Warden ofGoldsmiths, University of London (1976–1984), after which he retired from formal academic life. The Main Building at Goldsmiths has now been renamed the "Richard Hoggart Building" in tribute to his contributions to the college.
Hoggart was a member of numerous public bodies and committees, including theAlbemarle Committee on Youth Services (1958–1960), thePilkington Committee on Broadcasting (1960–1962), theArts Council of Great Britain (1976–1981) and theStatesman and Nation Publishing Company Ltd (1977–1981). He was also Chairman of the Advisory Council for Adult andContinuing Education (1977–1983), and theBroadcasting Research Unit (1981–1991), as well as a Governor of theRoyal Shakespeare Company (1962–1988).
Richard Hoggart’sThe Uses of Literacy (1957) is an important book that helped start a new way of thinking about culture in the late1950s. In this book, Hoggart studied how working-class culture was changing, especially because of mass publications like tabloid newspapers, cheap novels, and popular magazines. He described the traditional working-class lifestyle, including work, family, religion, and local entertainment, and argued that these were being damaged by modern media and entertainment, such as the jukebox. Hoggart believed this influence was mostly negative and thought that mass culture made people less able to enjoy deep or complex ideas. Although his book is sometimes criticized for being too moralistic or nostalgic, its real value lies in bringing working-class culture into academic discussions and using close reading, a method from literary studies, to look at popular culture.[5]
In later works, such asThe Way We Live Now (1995), he regretted the decline inmoral authority that he held religion once provided. He also attacked contemporary education for its emphasis on the vocational, andcultural relativism for its tendency to concentrate on the popular and meretricious.
One of his two sons was the political journalistSimon Hoggart, who predeceased him by three months,[6] and the other was the television criticPaul Hoggart. He was also survived by a daughter, Nicola. InThe Chatterley Affair, a 2006 dramatisation of the 1960 trial made for thedigital television channelBBC Four, he was played by actorDavid Tennant.
In later life he suffered from dementia.[6] He died at a nursing home in London on 10 April 2014, aged 95.[7]
Hoggart wrote a "critical study" of the "whole range of Auden's works." This "range" included "the earlier poems of the thirties, the plays, and the long poems."[8]
