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Explores the history of adult education in England focusing on the relationship and interactions between the English intellectuals and people within the working class. States that the two groups were brought together due to their rejection of individualism and materialism. (CMK)

Discusses the origins of university adult education and the motives of the Oxford and Cambridge teachers who organized and taught the first classes. Surveys the history of university adult education by examining four phases, each associated with a particular form of political commitment. (CMK)

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00717.x Byline: Lawrence Goldman Abstract: Abstract 'This paper provides an overview of aspects of the history of British sociology. In particular, it tries to answer critical historical work by among others, Perry Anderson and Philip Abrams, which sought to explain the supposed indigenous 'failure' to develop academic sociology in Britain before the 1960s. It is argued that a narrowly academic reading of the history of sociology cannot do justice to its role in the service of social administration and public enlightenment and may exaggerate the degree to which sociology from its foundations was conceived as a purely intellectual discipline. The paper points to a thriving sociological culture in Britain in the generation before the First World War, though it was one in which many contributions came from philosophers, natural scientists and political economists rather then self-proclaimed 'sociologists'. It ends with a brief review of Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, a founder of the Sociological Society and editor of the Sociological Review, whose biographies and eclectic social and international interests tell us something about the personalities and political interests of early British sociological pioneers.'