[E. M.] Forster could not believe that a clerk might be genuinely thrilled by literature. (That prejudice is not dead among academics even today.) Aping his betters, [Leonard] Bast pathetically grinds away at his Ruskin and puts in time at concerts. They mean nothing to him, yet he is always hoping for a “sudden conversion, a belief … which is particularly attractive to a half-baked mind. … Of a heritage that may expand gradually he had no conception: he hoped to come to Culture suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus.” Yet that is precisely how Culture came to autodidacts: their memoirs commonly climax with The Book That Made All The Difference. For the leisured classes, a gradually expanding intellect is certainly a preferable approach to learning, but the self-educated have only limited time to make up enormous gaps. They must move more quickly, they have hungrier minds, and they will passionately embrace any book that opens up a new intellectual landscape.

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2001)