British socialist literature : from Chartism to Marxism

• Main Author: Bottrill, Graham
• Published: Cardiff University 2006
• Subjects: 823
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.583872

This thesis is a selected narrative sequence, focusing upon social/political narratives published between 1870 and 1888 in order to connect the literature of Chartism, published in the 1840s and 1850s, with the naturalistic political novels of Margaret Harkness published between 1888 and 1921. The thesis was initially conceived during graduate study undertaken at the University of California in 1981-3. The foundations were fully laid by research undertaken independently during 1989 and 1990, while teaching in New York. Here, the truly inspiring facilities of the New York Public Library made it all real. The complications of returning to England in 1991 and the pressures of earning a living in a non-academic environment resulted in the study being left for many years, though not forgotten. I owe the completion of the thesis to its reception by the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University in 2003, and to the rigorous and detailed support from my adviser, Professor Stephen Knight. I would also like to extend my thanks to the facilities of the School of English, Communication and Philosophy for supplying me with prints of rare microfilmed documents, available only from the British Library. Working on such a thesis as a part-time student in addition to full-time and largely unrelated work eats significantly into personal time. I therefore thank my partner, Ruth Hecht, for her support and positive encouragement throughout its composition. Finally, I would like to remember my family, the Bottrills, who lived for many generations between Coventry and Leicester, the men as farm labourers or coal miners in rural pits, the women in domestic service. They lived and worked throughout the period covered by this thesis, and to them ultimately it is dedicated.