Active Citizenship and the Humanities: The Victorian Model

In Victorian Britain active citizenship was a pervasive ideal which aimed to bridge the gap between academia and slum. Inspired by civic zeal, 'men of letters' chose to address the 'social question' by personal engagement.

Setting up the Working Men’s College first, and subsequently spreading to the East End, these teachers were not interested in training workers in vocational skills, but in nurturing human desire for knowledge and experience fellowship, with its power to cross class divide.Eugenio Biagini is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge. Marcella Sutcliffe is AHRC associate at the University of Cambridge.