Re: Middle Class Radicals and Chartists
TERRY L. TAYLOR, CO-EDITOR H-ALBION (TAYLORT@ALPHA.NSULA.EDU)
Sun, 25 Jun 1995 13:59:26 -0600
There really hasn't been much recent research addressing this issue;
it's a great topic, though! Things you must look at include the
new Chartist bibliography edited by Ashton, Fyson, et als. (Mansell, 1995);
and "The Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League" in Asa Briggs' _Chartist
Studies_. I think James Vernon's book, _Politics and the People_ (CUP,
1993) is likely to be helpful, and Patrick Joyce's new book,
_Democratic Subjects_ addresses the topics of working-class and
middle-class radical leadership. Margot Finn's book wonderfully
illustrates the areas of convergence between Chartist and middle-class
thinking at the end of the 1840's and after (_After Chartism_).
That said, there are huge gaps in the literature concerning such topics
as Feargus O'Connor's connection with the Parliamentary and Financial
Reform Association in the late 1840's, and even concerning the relationship
between Joseph Sturge and the Sturgeites and the Chartists which led to the
1843 split between the
O'Connorites and everyone else. Neither of the two dissertations on
Chartism which are in the works in this country right now that I know
of deal with the question of Chartism and middle-class radicals.
++ Jamie Bronstein++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++ History Department "Vote yourself a farm."+
++ Stanford University -George Henry Evans++
++ disraeli@leland.stanford.edu+++++++++++++++++++++