. . . . . "Conditions sociales -- Grande-Bretagne -- 19e si\u00E8cle" . . . . . "Biographie" . "Classe ouvri\u00E8re -- Grande-Bretagne" . "Text" . "Conditions \u00E9conomiques -- Grande-Bretagne -- 19e si\u00E8cle" . . . "\u00C9crits de travailleurs anglais" . "Useful toil, autobiographies of working people from the 1820s to the 1920s" . "Useful Toil opens up a vein of social history in which the participants speak for themselves. The book assembles twenty-seven extracts from autobiographies and diaries of working people betwen the 1820s and the 1920s -wheelwrights and stone-masons, miners and munition-workers, butlers and kitchen-maids, navvies, carpenters, potters and shop-assistants, to list only a few. These are the histories not of famous persons but of ordinary people, few of whom left any mark outside their immediate circle. The result is an interior view of their working lives and aspirations: a first-hand, authentic record. Their stories provide the antithesis of that kind of history which concentrates on \\\"great names\\\" and ignores the mass of mankind." . "1974" . "Useful toil, autobiographies of working people from the 1820s to the 1920s" .