HOGGART, Richard ~ The Uses of Literacy.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Chatto and Windus, London: 1957.

8vo., orange publisher's cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt to spine; in the black and red printed dustwrapper, with text and decorative borders; THE BOOK near-fine, just a little rubbed at edges, with faint ghosting to the paste-downs; previous bookseller sticker and Ex Libris of Eric J. Thompson to the front paste-down; the very good WRAPPER with some evening toning and browning, more so to the spine and folds, with one dark smudge to spine, and a few nicks and chips to edges; a couple of closed tears to the lower panel repaired internally with tape. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition, first printing. Hoggart's first major work, and a key text in the development of modern Media Studies, which examines the influence of mass media in modern literacy. Partly autobiographical, it is written from the perspective of his own upbringing in a working-class family in Leeds, and laments the loss of this particular kind of culture with a society being imposed upon by advertising, media and Americanisation. Hoggart was famously cited as claiming, in Lady Chatterley trial for obscenity, that Lawrence's work merely repeated words he had heard on a building site on his way into the court - a comment which reportedly influenced the final outcome. Scarce as a first printing.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good