Thomas Carlyle, Chartism , and the Irish in Early Victorian England

Bibliographic Data

ID8092898
AuthorsRoger Swift (corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume29
Issue1
Pages67-83
Publication date2001-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVictorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1060150301291050
OpenAlexW2027862987
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited14

Crowds of miserable Irish darken all our towns. — Chartism T HUS WROTE T HOMAS C ARLYLE in his famous long pamphlet Chartism , published in December 1839. But what moved Carlyle, the intellectual hero of the age, to direct attention in Chartism to the Irish presence in the early Victorian city? Why did he present the Irish in England in such negative terms? Was his analysis correct? And what was the wider significance of his interpretation? These, as Carlyle might have said, are measurable questions and they form the essential framework of this paper. Yet it is impossible to respond to these questions without first examining the contemporary social, economic, and political contexts within which Chartism was written; Carlyle’s development as an historian in the early 1830s; and the purpose of Chartism , including the chapter on the Irish entitled “The Finest Peasantry in the World

Crowds · Interpretation (philosophy · Irish · Media studies · Sociology · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Irish and British Studies · Philosophy