For the majority of their history the Egyptians were polytheistic; Yet in the illustrious history of the Egyptian people there was a very brief time period in which the ruling class enforced monotheism at the behest of a religiously fundamentalist pharaoh.
While the Spirit within me awakens to song,[1] The strain, lovely Freedom! to thee shall belong ; Where’er thou art fetter’d, where’er thou art free, While I waken the lyre, it shall […]
His style reminds us of Cooper’s most approved nautical fictions, rather than of the coarse and vulgar “yarns” so tediously spun by Captain Marryat. He introduces us to scenes and adventures of stirring and painful interest.
By Stephen Basdeo, a writer and historian based in Leeds, United Kingdom. This article follows on from previous posts on Eugene Sue’s epic socialist novel Mysteries of the People. In 1848 Karl […]
In this book, therefore—small though it be when compared with the vast magnitude of its subject—there are a thousand discrepancies—lustre and obscurity, which pervade all we see, and all we conceive in this age of twilight, which envelope our political theories, our religious opinions, our domestic life, and which are even discovered in the histories we write of others, as well as in those of ourselves.
This pro-democracy poem titled ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ was written by William Jones in 1875 and published in the socialist People’s Advocate newspaper.
‘A Lay from the Trenches’ was a poem, written in 1855, by a soldier serving in the Crimean War. It was first published in the London Journal.
The following lines were written by the antiquary Joseph Ritson (1752–1803) and were first printed in the Newcastle Miscellany in 1772, then later as a standalone tract.
The following poem was written by George W.M. Reynolds and originally appeared in his novel Alfred: The Adventures of a French Gentleman (1838), which was originally serialised in the Monthly Magazine. The poem is about the deeds of a knight errant in medieval Palestine during the crusades.
I defy any living soul to refute Thomas Paine’s arguments. I have read answers to them, and attempts at refutation; but none succeed–all sink into the ground.
The following pro-democracy hymn was written by a writer known only as “Bandiera” and was published in the Red Republican magazine, edited by George Julian Harney. It has been transcribed by Stephen Basdeo.
The following poem was written by Victor Hugo in 1837 and translated by Mrs Newton Crossland.
The following poem, written by Victor Hugo to celebrate the French Revolution of 1830, was translated by Elizabeth Collins.
Snakes are one of mankind’s most feared enemies, and the Victorians loved to read about them. Killer snakes appear in a variety of popular magazines and novels.
In 1851 G.W.M. Reynolds launched a new series of ‘memoirs’ novels that told the story of poor women struggling to make their way in a heartless and alienating capitalist world.
“He defied the law, he suffered imprisonment, and lost his property in struggling for a right … we are indebted for the immense benefits derived by the masses from the circulation amongst them of cheap literature.”
George R. Stewart’s novel Earth Abides grapples with the question of what shape society will take after a deadly pandemic kills off most of the earth’s population.
Georg Herwegh’s ‘A Song of Hatred’ expresses contempt for the German ruling class and was translated by the Fenian activist James Clarence Mangan in 1849.
Charles Cole was one of the finest radical poets of the early nineteenth century. ‘Degradation of Toil’ was first printed in Cole’s collection of poetry in 1835.
This is a short story by Susannah Reynolds, printed in Reynolds’s Monthly Magazine, December 1838. The story has been transcribed by Jessica Elizabeth Thomas.
The greatest and most fatal error in the annals of the world was suffering the growth and formation of an Aristocracy; it is the direst plague with which this earth is cursed, filling it with eternal bitterness.
G.W.M. Reynolds launched a personal crusade against army brutality, speaking out against it in both his fiction and his journalism.
In the 1850s the United Kingdom became home to a number of European refugees who fled political persecution. Welcome to the Refugees celebrates the arrival of persecuted people on British shores.
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.