Literature and Institutions of Welfare

Perspectives on the ways in which welfarist ideology has underpinned the teaching, reading and production of literature from the 1930s to the present. The welfare state in Britain established a new level of access to literature as a public good alongside other national resources that were grounded in a principle of democratic egalitarianism: the National Health Service, secondary education, promises of full employment and new housing structures. This volume charts the impact of the founding of t