The Oxford Book of Work

by Keith Thomas (Editor)

Primal curse or sacred duty? Painful drudgery or the only sure route to human happiness? Work has always evoked conflicting reactions. Yet whether we view it as a tedious necessity or embrace it as a compulsive addiction, it remains an inescapable and endlessly fascinating part of the human
condition.
To illuminate the changing experience of work, this deeply enjoyable anthology draws upon more than 500 writers from classical antiquity to modern poets, dramatists and novelists; theologians, economists and philosophers; social investigators and journalists; diarists, letter-writers and
autobiographies. Charles Aickens, Adam Smith, Anthony Trollope, Mark Twain, Washington Irving, Karl Marx, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Henry Ford, John Steinbeck, Primo Levi, Upton Sinclair, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Frost, Tom Wolfe, Harriot Martineau, Louisa Alcott, and Dorthy Parker are among the
diverse and distinguished authors included in this volume.
While Keith Thomas explores many different forms of work--from ploughing a field to sailing the sea, from mining for coal to writing a poem, and from keeping shop to practicing medicine--he does not forget housework, schoolwork, and other forms of unpaid labor. All human life is young
people starting work, the multitudes seeking employment, the old coping with retirement, and utopians seeking to eliminate work altogether. The delights of occupation and the harshness of compulsory labor are contrasted with the pleasures of rest and idleness.
Keith Thomas's magisterial compilation and scintillating introductory essay show that work does not just provide us with the means of subsistence; it also makes possible all the pleasures and acievements of civilization.

Genres: History, Essays, Philosophy, Cultural

640 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 1999

About the author

Sir Keith Thomas was born in 1933 and educated at Barry County Grammar School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. He has spent all his academic career in Oxford, as a senior scholar of St. Antony's (1955), a Prize Fellow of All Souls (1955-57), Fellow and Tutor of St John's (1957-85), Reader (1978-85), ad hominem Professor (1986) and President of Corpus Christi (1986-2000). He returned to All Souls as a Distinguished Fellow (2001-15). He is now an Honorary Fellow of All Souls, Balliol, Corpus Christi and St John's. Elected FBA in 1979, he was President of the British Academy (1993-97). He is a member of the Academia Europaea, a Founding Member of the Learned Society of Wales, a Foreign Hon. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Hon. Member of the Japan Academy. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton, Stanford, Columbia and Louisiana State Universities. He has published essays on many different aspects of the social and cultural history of early modern England.

Reviews

[Narr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I come back to this book time and again. When I begin to think my work is all shadows and dust I pick through this to remind myself that it's also flesh and bone.

[Gregory French · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional.

[Twlogos · Rating 2 out of 5]

What about "Work"

[Jonathan]

None