Edward Palmer Thompson (February 3, 1924, Oxford – August 28, 1993, Worcester), was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, in particular his sociological work The Making of the English Working Class (1963). He also published influential biographies of William Morris (1955) and (posthumously) Wi...
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Edward Palmer Thompson (February 3, 1924, Oxford – August 28, 1993, Worcester), was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, in particular his sociological work The Making of the English Working Class (1963). He also published influential biographies of William Morris (1955) and (posthumously) William Blake (1993) and was a prolific journalist and essayist. He also published the novel The Sykaos Papers and a collection of poetry.
Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Although he left the party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he nevertheless remained a Marxist, calling for a rebellion against Stalinism as a prerequisite for the restoration of communists' "confidence in our own revolutionary perspectives." Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the...
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