| Sumario: | The English amateur research organization Mass-Observation produced the book 'May the Twelfth' (1937), the subject of which is British life on the Coronation Day of George VI, 12 May 1937. The group was preoccupied with identifying what it was not a part of, such as the fields of journalism, advertising market research, and academia. The movement's founders, Charles Madge, Tom Harrisson, and Humphrey Jennings, prolifically wrote and spoke about the virtues of the group. Internal division concerning the group's relationship to the state and other critical issues helped spawn widely differing statements about the group's views and motives. Mass-Observation's upper-middle-class observers were keenly aware of differences between themselves and the lower classes. 'May the Twelfth' constantly struggles with notions of who and what is British. By definition the group's goal could not be realized, but the attempt sheds valuable light on the limits of auto-ethnography. In 1939, with its founders gone, Mass-Observation changed into a wartime public morale agency for the government.
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