Good writing about the Luddite Rebellion?

July 10, 2023 8:51 PM

What good writing is out there about the Luddite uprisings? Nonfiction or fiction, academic or popular, longform or short -- I'm up for anything.

All I've found so far is:
- Shirley, Charlotte Bronte's novel, which is perfectly nice.
-The Luddite Rebellion by Brian Bailey which, for being published in the late 1990s, has surprisingly retrograde politics.

posted by HeroZero to Society & Culture (9 answers total)

Best answer: E.P. Thompson's The Making Of The English Working Class is canonical (though Luddism is only a part of the broad sweep social history), as is Eric Hobwbawm's essay The Machine Breakers.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:19 PM on July 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Out in September, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.
posted by caek at 9:29 PM on July 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: There's an article in the most recent Jacobin about the Luddites

a-and Thomas Pynchon wrote this: Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite? in 1984.
posted by chavenet at 2:07 AM on July 11, 2023

Best answer: This is more by way of a footnote, but here's a finely detailed paper about Fonthill Gifford, a village in Wiltshire, and the effects of the farm machinery breakage there in 1830. Starting on page 12 there are extracts from the Times about the incident.

(I didn't write this paper – it was sent to me because the family described on page 7 are related to me. Samuel Macey was transported to Tasmania, leaving behind a wife and 9 children, but he finally got back to Fonthill Gifford in his old age. My English grandmother was a Macey and Samuel was her great-uncle.)
posted by zadcat at 7:09 AM on July 11, 2023

Best answer: Short form essay as it relates to modern science fiction: Cory Doctorow: Science Fiction is a Luddite Literature
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 10:46 AM on July 11, 2023

Best answer: Rebels Against The Future: The Luddites And Their War On The Industrial Revolution: Lessons For The Computer Age / Kirkpatrick Sale.
posted by mfoight at 11:42 AM on July 11, 2023

Response by poster: And how could I have neglected the great Chumbawumba?

Thanks for the great answers, all.
posted by HeroZero at 9:26 AM on July 12, 2023

Response by poster: Futurely
posted by HeroZero at 7:59 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Less historic and more academic but looking good: Breaking things at work by Gavin Mueller. Here's some quotes I liked (twitter, sorry).
posted by disso at 11:49 AM on July 30, 2023