Revisiting Chartist historiography: On Sources

It is always necessary for historians to return to the primary sources they use to construct their interpretations of the past[1]. This is especially the case with autobiographies of ordinary people, an essential source for Chartism. This is a relatively new area of enquiry despite the use made, for example of Lovett’s autobiography in constructing the ‘moral-force’ version of Chartism. When Richard Altick wrote The Common English Reader, a pioneering work in the field in the mid-1950s, historians knew few such memoirs. By 1981, David Vincent had assembled 142 memoirs by early nineteenth century British workers and, in Bread, Knowledge and Freedom, showed how they could be used to reconstruct diverse working class experiences. In 1989, Vincent, together with John Burnett and David Mayall, completed The Autobiography of the Working Class, a bibliography listing nearly two thousand documents, published and unpublished from nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain[2].

Like any other historical source, autobiographies contain certain inherent distortions and biases. They are almost always written towards the end of the life of the author at some distance from the events described and often to provide some money for old age. Like all autobiographies, they are in part concerned with establishing the place of the author in history or at least how the author wished posterity to view him or her. Their authors are not entirely representative of their class, whatever that class may be, if only because they are unusually articulate. This was especially the case with the working class. Every stratum within the working classes produced autobiographies, but skilled workers wrote a disproportionate number. Women accounted for only about five per cent of the authors born before 1870. Some autobiographical manuscripts were edited or rejected by middle class publishers though this is less of a problem than one would suppose. The majority of surviving memoirs were unpublished or were self-publicised or were published by local or radical presses. Agitators usually managed to record their lives in some form with the result that the Vincent bibliography is skewed to the political left.

How valuable are autobiographies to historians? One author suggested that the autobiographer, “may helplessly, perhaps even thoughtlessly; but more probably designedly, select, omit, minimize, exaggerate, in fact lie as wholeheartedly” as the novelist[3]. This does not disqualify the memoir as a historical document: after all, similar uncertainties are built into everything historians find in archives and published records. Historians can minimise these uncertainties if they use sources with an awareness of their limitations and can check them against other kinds of documents but they cannot eliminate them. Joel Wiener has subjected William Lovett’s Life and Struggles, published in 1876 (though at the end of the preface Lovett stated that “it was begun in 1840, and has been added to from time to time up to the year 1874”) to this kind of verification[4]. He concludes, “His narrative is generally persuasive, although it is at times inconsistent and self-congratulatory…the earlier and later phases of his life are more difficult to reconstruct and even the Chartist years contain shadows and inconsistencies, a problem accentuated by Lovett’s tendency to omit or ‘reinterpret’…material unfavourable to him.”

What do Chartist autobiographies tell the historian about the world in which their authors lived and the experiences they had?[5] Some of the Chartist newspapers that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s explicitly subordinated literature to politics. The Labourer proclaimed that it “had one great goal before our eyes – the redemption of the Working Class from their thraldom – and to this object we have made the purpose of each article subservient…We have placed poetry and romance side by side with politics and history.” However, this resistance to imaginative literature was beginning to weaken and Chartist fiction played at important role in informing, raising political consciousness and entertaining working class radicals[6]. Radical journalists increasingly saw the novel as a legitimate art form and as a means for raising important political questions in accessible and entertaining ways. There was a growing sense within the Chartist movement that literature was compatible with and necessary for political liberation. The propaganda of Robert Owen alone did not convert the printer Thomas Frost (born 1821) to socialism[7]: “The poetry of Coleridge and Shelley was stirring within me and making me ‘a Chartist’ and something more.” He expressed his sense of liberation in the following way,[8] “I was beginning to assert for myself freedom of thought, and to rebel against custom and convention; and there was naturally much in common between the writer and the reader.” Books played a central part in the lives of many of the leading Chartists[9] and they commented on it, often at length in their autobiographies. Access to literature[10] played an important part in the development of the campaign against the stamped press in the 1820s and 1830s and a belief in the need for educational improvement was inherent in the ideas of the ‘Knowledge’ Chartists in the 1840s. The result is that radical biographies often have a dual function: to inform but also to educate. This may influence the ways in which historians should view them.

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[1] This has been particularly the case with visual images: Stephen Roberts and Dorothy Thomson Images of Chartism, Merlin Press, 1998 and more generally Francis Haskell History and its Images, Yale University Press, 1993 and Peter Burke Eyewitnessing: The Use of Images as Historical Evidence, Reaktion Books, 2001

[2] John Burnett, David Vincent and David Mayall (eds.) The Autobiography of the Working Class: An Annotated, Critical Bibliography, three volumes, Harvester, 1984-89. For historians who want to investigate the upper and middle class, the potential sample is even larger. William Matthews (ed.) British Autobiographies, Archon Press, 1968 lists more than six thousand.

[3] A. E. Coppard It’s Me, O Lord, Methuen, 1957, page 9.

[4] Joel Wiener William Lovett, Manchester University Press, 1989, pages 2-4.

[5] Jonathan Rose The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class, Yale University Press, 2001 is a pioneering work on the role of ‘audience’ in working class culture.

[6] Ian Haywood (ed.) The Literature of Struggle: An Anthology of Chartist Fiction, Ashgate, 1995 and the two subsequent volumes both entitled Chartist Fiction, Ashgate, 1999, 2000 that print works by Thomas Doubleday, Thomas Martin Wheeler and Ernest Jones are valuable. Stephen Roberts Radical Politicians and Poets in Early Victorian Britain, Lampeter, 1993 looks at the relationship between politics and poetry.

[7] Thomas Frost Forty Years’ Recollections: Literary and Political, London, 1889, pages 14-15, 38-39.

[8] Thomas Frost Reminiscences of a Country Journalist, London, 1886, pages 225-226.

[9] This can especially be seen in the life of Ernest Jones who combined literary and political activities in an almost seamless manner: see Miles Taylor Ernest Jones, Chartism and the Romance of Politics 1819-1869, Oxford University Press, 2003.

[10] Margaret Hambrick A Chartist’s Library, New York, 1986 is a valuable listing of the diverse 1,634 titles in George Julian Harney’s library. It provides a valuable insight into what at least one Chartist read.

Chartism Bibliography: Leaders and Followers

Many of the leading Chartists wrote their own, frequently self-justifying autobiographies. Though these often contain valuable information, their analysis of events is far from objective and, in some cases decidedly misleading. G. D. H. Cole Chartist Portraits, Macmillan, 1940 marks the point from which Chartist biographies proliferated.

William Lovett Life and Struggles of William Lovett, 1876 is Lovett’s autobiography. The 1967 edition prefaced by R.H. Tawney is an edited version. On Lovett see Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour History, volume vi, London, 1982, pages 165-179, Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2 1830-1870, Harvester Press, Brighton, 1984 and David Large ‘William Lovett’ in Patricia Hollis (ed.) Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England, Edward Arnold, 1974, pages 105-130. Joel Wiener William Lovett, Manchester University Press, 1989 is the best modern biography. O’Connor died in 1855 before he could write his own account of events. Contemporaries from Lovett onwards and historians from the first study by Gammage have been overwhelmingly hostile to O’Connor’s achievement. James Epstein The Lion of Freedom: Feargus O’Connor and the Chartist Movement 1832-1842, Croom Helm, 1982 sought to redress the balance.

Thomas Cooper The Life of Thomas Cooper, 1872, reprinted with an introduction by John Saville, Leicester University Press, 1971 is a major autobiography by a key player in 1842. R. J. Conklin Thomas Cooper, the Chartist (1805-1892), Manila, 1935 is currently the only biography. Stephen Roberts’ work on Cooper is the most recent and accurate: ‘Thomas Cooper in Leicester 1840-1843’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, volume 61, (1987), pages 62-76, ‘Thomas Cooper: Radical and Poet, c.1830-1860’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, volume 53 (1), (1988), ‘The Later Radical Career of Thomas Cooper, c.1845-1855’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, volume 64, (1990), pages 62-72 and ‘Thomas Cooper: A Victorian Working Class Writer’, Our History Journal, volume 16, (1990).

Francis Place long in need of a modern biography since that by Graham Wallas was published in its fourth edition in 1925 now, not altogether successfully has Dudley Miles Francis Place 1771-1854: The life of a remarkable radical, Harvester, 1988. Alfred Plummer Bronterre: A Political Biography of Bronterre O’ Brien 1804-1864, London, 1971 is the standard work on this enigmatic figure. Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, Brighton, volume 2 1830-1870, 1984 is a useful shorter study. A.R. Schoyen The Chartist Challenge: a Portrait of George Julian Harney, London, 1958 remains the best biography. Ambrose G. Barker Henry Hetherington 1792-1849, London, 1938 remains the only modern biography. Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770 provides a shorter, more recent alternative.

Michael S. Edwards Purge This Realm. A Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, London, 1994, pages 38-106 deals with Stephens ‘Chartist years’. Biographies of Cleave and Benbow can be found in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour History, volume vi, London, 1982. Iowerth Prothero ‘William Benbow and the Concept of the “General Strike”’, Past and Present, volume 63, (1974), pages 132-171 is an invaluable study of Benbow’s ideas. William Dorling Henry Vincent: A Biographical Sketch, London 1879 remains the only detailed study of his life. Baylen and Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770 contain a short study. Brian Harrison and Patricia Hollis (eds.) Robert Lowery Radical and Chartist, London, 1979 introduce an annotated selection from Lowery’s writings. Stephen Roberts Radical Politicians and Poets in Early Victorian Britain, Lampeter, 1993 provides an excellent study of Robert Peddie, a leading figure in the Bradford rising. David Williams John Frost: A Study in Chartism, Cardiff, 1939, reprinted New York, 1969 is a key biography from a historiographical perspective. J.E. Lloyd and R.T. Jenkins (eds.) The Dictionary of Welsh Biography Down in 1940, Cardiff, 1959 has short biographies of the leading figures in the Newport rising including John Frost and Zephaniah Williams. John Saville Ernest Jones: Chartist, London, 1952, Miles Taylor Ernest Jones, Oxford University Press, 2003 and Owen R Ashton W. E. Adams: Chartist, Radical and Journalist, Bewick Press, 1991 are the most valuable biographies of later Chartists. Raymond Challinor A Radical Lawyer in Victorian England: W. P. Roberts and the struggle for workers’ rights, I. B. Tauris, 1990 provides an interesting middle class perspective. Paul Pickering and Owen Ashton Friends of the People: Uneasy Radicals in the Age of the Chartists, Merlin Press, 2002 contains biographies of six radical leaders including Peter McDouall and Henry Solly.

The most extensive general discussion of the question ‘who were the Chartists?’ is to be found in Dorothy Thompson The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, Aldershot, 1984, pages 91-236. Christopher Godfrey Chartist Lives: The Anatomy of a Working-Class Movement, New York, 1987 is a more detailed study.

Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson (eds.) Women in British Politics 1760-1860: The Power of the Petticoat, Macmillan, 2000 places protest by women in a broader context. Helen Rogers Women and the People: Authority, Authorship and the Radical Tradition in Nineteenth-Century England, Ashgate, 2000 pages 80-123 is an excellent study of the role of women within the Chartist movement and is part of an extremely important study placing women within the radical tradition. Anna Clark The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class, University of California Press, 1995 seeks to place the struggle of working class women within the broader struggles of the working class. On women and Chartism, there are two specific studies. David Jones ‘Women and Chartism’, History, volume 68, (1983), pages 1-21 is less critical. Jutta Schwarzkopf Women in the Chartist Movement, London, 1991 is a more detailed, but not entirely satisfactory, study.