Kevin Binfield and William Christmas open their collection of essays with a general justification for its existence: there has recently been an unprecedented increase in scholarship on laboring-class literary production, such that laboring-class writers are now being widely taught. What makes this book such a valuable resource for instructors, however, is that it identifies how the teaching of this material both intersects with, and can depart from, approaches used to teach other historically noncanonical fields such as women's writing and writing by racial minorities. Its goal, in this vein, is to consider ways to cultivate critical thinking in students at various levels of study that will move them beyond their typical initial responses to laboring-class writing—primarily an overemphasis on nostalgia or poverty as a social problem—onto an exploration of the identities, contexts, and aesthetics that have shaped the nebulous and dynamic worlds of labor and literature.

Binfield and Christmas have organized the collection into five sections: “Teaching Genres”; “Teaching Selected Authors and Works”; “Pedagogical Strategies”; “Types of Courses”; and, “Resources.” Although these sections have overlapping themes—particularly questions of canonicity and how modes of writing are classified and validated—this structure allows the book to also address finer nuances of texts both known and relatively obscure and to identify ways to underscore the relevance of this material to students with diverse and sometimes competing priorities. “Teaching Genres” looks at approaches to teaching poetry, theater, broadside ballads, social problem novels, autobiographies, Chartist novels, and mysteries. This section identifies how teaching laboring-class texts complicates traditional understandings of genre by exposing students to contemporaneous yet radically diverse uses of form. “Teaching Selected Authors and Works” focuses on several singular laboring-class perspectives, but not without acknowledging the ways in which such focus demands editorial choices that can, ultimately, participate in the reshaping of the canon itself. As several of the essays suggest, even the most well-intentioned inclusion of laboring-class writers in anthologies and courses must be undertaken with an awareness of the privilege that validates literature. “Pedagogical Strategies” explores how various theoretical and historical paradigms can inform, and be informed by, the study of laboring-class writers. Labor studies, studies of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, art and culture, ventriloquism, revolution, leisure, and the construction of truth are all presented as ripe for interrogation against literature written by members of the laboring class. “Types of Courses” exemplifies how this material might come together in a syllabus, offering a variety of sample courses—not just surveys, but also those that focus on writers of color, women writers, and rural writers. Addressing the realities of teaching literature for many, this section also includes a chapter on service-learning courses and acknowledges both the challenges and opportunities that inhere in opening up the often-unknown realm of laboring-class writers to students whose first passion may not, in fact, be literature at all. The book closes with “Resources”: finding aids, annotations on databases, and supplementary reading to accompany the essays.

Teaching Laboring-Class British Literature is perhaps most distinguished by its two overarching themes: the kinds of authority that inhere in academic instruction, and how, exactly, to teach material that intersects with historical socioeconomics in a way that is relatable to students. Binfield and Christmas are clear that the book is not an attempt to create a new laboring-class canon; however, many of the essays emphasize that the process of creating a course is in fact a way of framing what belongs in “significant” literary history. Moyra Haslett's “Rubbing Shoulders with Mary Leapor,” for instance, likens curriculum building to anthologization (75), while in “Elizabeth Hands's Verse Satire and Literary Marketplace,” Scarlett Bowen delineates ways to make clear to students that cultural institutions shape taste (93). Similarly, Fiona Wilson's essay on James Hogg argues that the inclusion of laboring-class writers on courses can shake the foundations of the canon by encouraging students to ask questions about how the cannon is framed (117). A common thread in these essays is an awareness that even in encouraging students to interrogate the status quo, professors and students are always framing and reframing the field, deciding what is worth reading or printing, and what is not.

It is with this awareness that the collection addresses relatability. Understanding both teaching and learning as exercises in empathy, several essays work to locate connections between laboring-class writers and the lived experiences of students. Monica Smith Hart, for example, argues that students with an appetite for the scandal and drama of reality television are inclined to be attracted to the scandalous biographies of writers like Anne Yearsley, and suggests that this may be a productive way in to Yearsley's poetry (85). She also notes that first-generation students, who make up an increasingly large demographic in many US schools, identify with Yearsley's struggles for respect and inclusion (91). Aruna Krishnamurthy's essay on William Cobbett echoes this sentiment, acknowledging that the inclusion of laboring-class writers in courses helps to connect a largely working-class student demographic to a period that might otherwise be alienating to them (108). Timothy Ziegenhagen discusses these connections in relationship to his students’ disciplinary experiences. For example, Ziegenhagen uses John Clare's writing to show students learning about sustainable agriculture how biodiversity was figured as crucial to the well-being of workers and working-class life.

For all its emphasis on making material accessible to students, this collection is neither patronizing to students nor unrealistic in its imagining of the modern post-secondary experience. It remains conscious of the fact that changing classroom demographics and needs are providing opportunities to locate additional and unlikely shared contexts between students and writers. In doing this, the collection offers thoughtful student-centered blueprints for teaching typically underrepresented authors.