Chartism (Seminar studies in history)

This famous series examines key themes in British, European and World history in short, succinct volumes. The text is supported by primary material in a Documents section, a full bibliography and an index; where appropriate there are maps, chronologies and glossaries. All the books in the series are written by experts in the field who are not only familiar with the latest research but have often contributed to it. Works of scholarship in their own right, the books also provide a survey of current historical interpretations. Longman has now inaugurated a major programme of renewal and expansion for Seminar Studies, with many new titles and new editions in the pipeline. Existing books are being re-presented in a larger, more reader-friendly format as they reprint; and new books and new editions are being reset into an entirely new page design.
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This highly successful Seminar Study was first published in 1980, and then reissued as a Second Edition in 1986. From the outset the book established itself as the best short account of the Chartist movement available. Dr Royle has now revised his text for a third time: for the new edition he has incorporated discussion of the most recent historiographical debates and the bibliography has been brought fully up-to-date. A new generation of students is sure to welcome the Third Edition of this popular book.

The Chartist movement was a campaign which between 1838 and 1848 sought to achieve manhood suffrage in Britain through mass petitioning, lectures and other propaganda at a time of economic depression and social unrest. Historians are agreed upon little else. This book provides a brief overall survey of the movement, its origins and development, and then goes on to examine thematically aspects of the nature of the movement, its strategy, leadership and followers, local organisations and national communications, showing it to have been a wider and more diverse movement than any simple model of hunger politics would suggest. Throughout the text differing interpretations of Chartism are discussed and cross references to an extensive bibliography show the reader where further information can be found.

The main text is supported by a collection of over forty source extracts illustrating different and conflicting aspects of Chartism which provide the reader with the raw materials from which evidence can be drawn to construct his or her own line of argument and challenge the alternatives. The book is also supplemented by a useful chronology of the main events.

Edward Royle is Reader in History at the University of York.

Cover: Chartist meeting on Kennington Common, 10th April 1848 by W.B.Wollen. Reproduced courtesy of

Longman
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