The World is like a Troubled Sea was written anonymously and originally appeared in the Pocket Magazine.
The World is like a Troubled Sea | Anonymous
Stephen Basdeo
Stephen Basdeo is a historian and writer based in Leeds, UK.
A Young Lady’s Heart | Pierce Egan the Younger
The following poem, ‘In a Young Lady’s Heart’, was written by Pierce Egan the Younger in 1843 and published in The Era.
Last of the Queens and Kings | Armand Carrell
This poem titled ‘The Last of the Queens and the Kings’ was originally written in the 1830s French by Armand Carrell and later translated into English and published in Red Republican in 1850. It has now been republished in Reynolds’s News and Miscellany.
A Chartist History of England (1849-50): William Rufus | Edwin Roberts
His memory, unrelieved by one noble trait, one magnanimous action, or one pure sentiment, comes down to us in chronicles, lay and secular, as one violent and tyrannical. A perfidious friend, an encroaching neighbour, a heartless and ungenerous relation.
Afar from Home: A Poem of the Gold Rush | W. D.
This poem was written by a person known only as “W.D.” and published in the London Journal in 1860, which was then edited by Pierce Egan the Younger (1814–80). The poem might refer to the Gold Rushes of the mid-1800s, when explorers seeking to get rich quickly moved to the USA and Canada hoping to strike gold.
Masaniello’s Call to the Neapolitans: A Chartist Song (1839) | Anonymous
Let the king live, but let the government perish!” May we not profit by this bright example, or shall the pages of history continue unfolded to us in vain?
The “Good Old Times” (1849) | Anonymous
This poem “The Good Old Times” was written in 1849 and printed in Reynolds’s Miscellany; it mocks the idea that things were better in the past.
A Chartist History of England (1849–50) | Edwin Roberts
Had this fierce untameable man, who, led only by the instinct of plunder and blood, any right claim to have his position recognised by millions of people as a king by right divine?
The History of Socialism (Part II) | Louis Blanc
Socialism “is one of those primordial indestructible ideas, which the hand of God has engraved in human consciences, and which are perpetuated from age to age, and whose development forms an unbroken tradition through the world’s ages.”
The Dewdrop | Eliza Cook
Eliza Cook (24 December 1818 – 23 September 1889) was an English author and poet associated with the pro-democracy Chartist movement.
To Switzerland | Anonymous
To Switzerland originally appeared in a Chartist songbook in 1839 and celebrates the beautiful country’s landscape and long tradition of political liberty.
The History of Socialism (Part I) | Louis Blanc
Socialism “is one of those primordial indestructible ideas, which the hand of God has engraved in human consciences, and which are perpetuated from age to age, and whose development forms an unbroken tradition through the world’s ages.”
Forgive and Forget | Philo Junius
A poem titled Forgive and Forget first published in 1850 in Home Circle | Subscribe Now
The Emigrant (1850) | Pierce Egan
Pierce Egan the Younger was a novelist and journalist who lived between 1814 and 1880. The author of several popular novels, he occasionally wrote poetry, such as the one below which originally appeared in the Home Circle about an emigrant who misses home.
“The Sunbeam” (1857) | F.W. Alexander
The following poem was written in 1857 by F.W. Alexander and printed in Reynolds’s Miscellany. Little is known about the poet; they were in all likelihood not a professional poet but had a day job and simply contributed a few lines to Reynolds’s Miscellany, which often published contributions from readers.
Brave Canadians! (1839) | S.R.G.
There is no country on the face of the earth where despotisms prevails with more horrible atrocity than in Canada. We can well conceive the sort of sympathies entertained by the Melbourne and Russell government, when they permitted that splendid colony to be devastated by inhuman fiends, whose names shall be consigned to eternal infamy, as samples of the cannibal spirit of aristocratic domination. May our beneficent CREATOR grant that the British People may yet prove the liberators of the brave, bleeding, and prostrate Canadians!
Harriet Owen, the Fisherman’s Daughter (1857) | Pierce Egan the Younger
A Victorian-era tale of woe and adversity for a brother and sister abandoned by their parents.
Liberty’s Address to the Welsh | Thomas Jenkins
A radical song, written by Thomas Jenkins at the beginning of the Chartist movement, urging the Welsh to rise up and fight for democracy.
Awake! The Torpor of this Dream | J.D.
An anonymously written song from 1839 urging the Victorian working classes on to revolution: Awake! the torpor of this dream, / This icy weight on Feeling’s stream— / This dull yielding to your foes / Invites and justifies their blows!.
Painting a Pandemic: Michiel Sweerts’s “Plague in Ancient City” (1652) | Stephen Basdeo
Michiel Sweerts (1618–64) was a Flemish painter who specialised in genre paintings, portraits, and allegorical paintings. He greater part of the 1640s in Rome, during which time there was an outbreak of plague in the city which inspired him to paint this scene.
Ragnar’s Death Song | Stephen Basdeo
Legend has it that Ragnar composed his “Death Song” as he lay in the pit of snakes waiting to die, the sentence upon him having been passed by the Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian King Aelle. Stephen Basdeo examines the publication of this ancient song.
Man from 1818 Predicts USA of the Future | Stephen Basdeo
“I venture to predict the following improvements: Improvements which time may verify when the hand that now writes them, has long mouldered in the clammy soil.”
A History of the End of the World | Stephen Basdeo
Humans have always expressed a ‘fear of the end’ in literary and artistic terms. The first apocalypse stories in Western culture came to us from the Bible, with Noah’s Flood giving us the archetypal ‘last man’ or ‘small group of survivors’ motif that has persisted in many retellings of the end times.
“Reynolds’s News and Miscellany” Approved for Google News Inclusion | Stephen Basdeo
Google News is a news aggregator, developed in 2006, which collates the daily feeds of over 20,000 news publishers’ content. Compared to that huge number, Reynolds’s News and Miscellany admittedly looks like “small fry”. But Google’s rules for inclusion in Google News are quite strict.