Tolpuddle Martyrs (5 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1st Edition. 239 pages, a good large format hardback, publisher's blue covered boards (in half blue calf over blue boards with gilt title lettering to spine. Top edges gold gilt.) Internally the book is clean. However, externally the covers have a couple of stains, and there's a forward lean to the book. Hence, our much lower price than all other booksellers.

Condition: NEW.

New ed. Paperback large octavo, very good condition, black & white drawings & text-photos, minor edgewear. 239 pp. New edition. Tom Mead tells the enthralling true story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs - British rural labourers convicted on a legal technicality - sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia for daring to start one of Britain's first trade unions. Not even the harsh brutality of the penal system could break their spirit. Dialogue is re-created to aid readability. (No date, but 1992 or later reprint, Trove. Originally published, 1946.).

London 1934. 4to. Or.hf. morocco. Gilt title on spine. T.e.g. (XVI,240pp.). With col. frontisp., title-vign., num. full-page plates of which 3 coloured by W.G. Easton, sketch maps, portr. by F. Horrabin, and num. cartoons and text-illusts. by Low and Dyson. 1st ed.

First edition of the official government paper pardoning the Tolpuddle Martyrs (otherwise the Dorchester Labourers, or Six Men of Dorset) and allowing their return to England. Their sentences of transportation to Australia for forming a trade union had caused a public outcry in 1834. In England, agitation against the sentences began almost as soon as they were pronounced, and the outcry over the injustice of the case won the support of high-profile radical figures, including Daniel O'Connell, Fergus O'Connor, and William Cobbett. Less than a month after the trial, the men were already being referred to as "martyrs". Under pressure, the home secretary, Lord John Russell, granted the men conditional pardons in June 1835, followed by full pardons in March 1836, although that news was not passed on to the men, who remained in assigned labour long after they should have been freed. See Printing and the Mind of Man 305. Single folio sheet (338 x 215 mm). Housed in a cloth portfolio. Dutch library stamp to outer margin and shelf mark at head. Horizontal crease where folded, a little marginal chipping; a very good copy.