Thomas Cooper, The Life of Thomas Cooper. Written by Himself (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1872), 53, 55—60, 62—4

Abstract Cooper (1805—92), autodidact poet, political activist, novelist, was the model for Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke (1850) though the passage below might also resonate uncomfortably with Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1896). Cooper’s autobiography is fascinating not only for his account of Chartism but for the details of his self-education. As will be clear, he is less interested in interpreting texts than using them to integrate himself into an imagined high-status society. In the passage below he is 19, an apprentice shoemaker in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. He has just joined a cheap private circulating library and started borrowing from a free one.