Description: A thematic analysis of the career of Bronterre O'Brien, one of the most influential leaders of Chartism, that relates his activities--and the Chartist movement--to broader themes in the history of Britain, Europe, and America during the nineteenth century. Examining the personal, tactical, and ideological contexts for O'Brien's radicalism, and his development of a social and economic agenda to accompany "constitutional" Chartism, this book also evaluates O'Brien's reputation among his contemporaries and among modern historians, in order better to understand his contribution to radicalism in Britain and beyond.
Brief description:
Michael J. Turner is Roy Carroll Distinguished Professor of British History in the Department of History at Appalachian State University.
Review Quotes: "Bronterre O'Brien, the 'schoolmaster of Chartism, ' was the intellectual, inspiring, irascible, and infuriating godfather of the early working-class movement in Britain. In his major biography, the first to be based upon full records and modern historiography, Michael J. Turner reevaluates this major figure and decisively confirms his importance. Highly readable and comprehensively informed, this is a book no student of nineteenth-century British social and political history can afford to ignore."
--Marc Mulholland, Professor of History, Oxford University, author of Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear: from Absolutism to Neo-Conservatism