Nineteenth-Century Radical Traditions (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)

Annotation This book takes a fresh look at the progressive interventions of writers in the nineteenth century. From Cobbett to Dickens and George Eliot, and including a host of lesser known figures - popular novelists, poets, journalists, political activists - writers shared a commitment to exploring the potential of literature as a medium in which to imagine new and better worlds. The essays in this volume ask how we should understand these interventions and what are their legacies in the twentieth and twenty first centuries? Inspired by the work of the radical literary scholar, the late Sally Ledger, this volume provides a commentary on the political traditions that underpin the literature of this complex period, and examines the interpretive methods that are needed to understand them. This timely book contributes to our appreciation of the radical traditions that underpin our literary past No Laughing Matter: Chartism And The Limits Of Satire / Mike Sanders -- ‘their Deadly Longing’: Paternalism, The Past, And Perversion In Barnaby Rudge / Ben Winyard -- Frederick William Robinson, Charles Dickens, And The Literary Tradition Of ‘low Life’ / Anne Schwan -- Remembering Radicalism On The Midlands Turnpike: George Eliot, Felix Holt, And William Cobbett / Ruth Livesey -- The Commune In Exile: Urban Insurrection And The Production Of International Space / Scott Mccracken -- Divorce And The New Woman / Anne Humpherys -- Revolutions In Journalism: W.t. Stead, Indexing, And ‘searching’ / Laurel Brake -- Towards A Perlocutionary Poetics? / Isobel Armstrong. Joseph Bristow, Josephine Mcdonagh, Editors. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 213-231) And Index. Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction....Pages 1-20 No Laughing Matter: Chartism and the Limits of Satire....Pages 21-35 ‘Their Deadly Longing’: Paternalism, the Past, and Perversion in Barnaby Rudge ....Pages 37-62 Frederick William Robinson, Charles Dickens, and the Literary Tradition of ‘Low Life’....Pages 63-84 Remembering Radicalism on the Midlands Turnpike: George Eliot, Felix Holt, and William Cobbett....Pages 85-112 The Commune in Exile: Urban Insurrection and the Production of International Space....Pages 113-136 Divorce and the New Woman....Pages 137-155 Revolutions in Journalism: W.T. Stead, Indexing, and ‘Searching’....Pages 157-185 Towards a Perlocutionary Poetics?....Pages 187-211 Back Matter....Pages 213-243