What a minister needed to succeed in a political career was, therefore, not the confidence of the House of Commons but the confidence of the king.
How Eighteenth-Century Governments Worked | Stephen Basdeo
Victorian-Era Robin Hood Conferences | Stephen Basdeo
All of the newspapers which covered the event paid significant attention to the panel on Robin Hood, which, if it happened to a Robin Hood conference today, would be a significant publicity coup.
Robin Hood’s Grave: A Poem (1827) | “J.A.”
The following poem, written by “J.A.” and titled “Robin Hood’s Grave” appeared in the Newcastle Magazine in November 1827. It has been transcribed by Stephen Basdeo.
“The Radical Nature of God’s Love”: Words from Rev. Rosemary Mitchell | Stephen Basdeo
“The radical nature of God’s love is that he brings joy, not happiness; love, not kindness; peace, not the absence of war; justice, not laws; truth, not facts; mercy, not toleration; this is not about keeping rules but transforming lives.”
The First British Edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Feathertop” in Home Circle (1852) | Stephen Basdeo
The first British edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Feathertop” in Home Circle in 1852. Hawthorne scholars have previously been unaware of the appearance of “Feathertop” in this magazine.
The Historian and His Cat | Stephen Basdeo
In the midst of this wreck of ancient books and utensils, with a gravity equal to Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat a large black cat.
British Library Selects Reynolds’s News and Miscellany for Inclusion in Digital Archive | Stephen Basdeo
“The British Library would like to archive your website in the UK Web Archive and to make it publicly available … It contains specially selected websites that represent different aspects of UK heritage.”
“A Rascal … but rich”: Karl Marx and G. W. M. Reynolds | Stephen Basdeo
“Reynolds is a rascal,” said Marx, “but a rich and able speculator. Find out what the father of communism thought about the biggest-selling novelist of the Victorian era.
The Glorious Fourth of July | Anonymous
This poem from 1849 celebrates American Independence on the 4 July 1776. It was originally published in the Democratic Review
Hymn to France | Victor Hugo
This poem ‘Hymn’ was written by Victor Hugo and celebrates the heroes of the French Revolution of 1830. The poem was translated by G.W.M. Reynolds and published in the Monthly Magazine.
History of the British Aristocracy: Part One (1849) | Anonymous
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.
Genius of France | Victor Hugo
This poem ‘The Genius of France’ was written by Victor Hugo and translated by G.W.M. Reynolds and published in the Monthly Magazine. It has been transcribed by Stephen Basdeo in 2021.
Death of Napoleon | Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo’s poem about Napoleon’s death was originally published in G.W.M. Reynolds Monthly Magazine in 1838.
Eve: Humankind’s First Revolutionary (1851) | Daniel Stern
She preferred grief to ignorance, death to slavery. She seized with a bold hand the guarded fruit, and moved the man to participate in her act of daring. The All-powerful chastised both, banished them.
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.
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.”
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!
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.
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.
The Rise of Democracy: The Passage of the Reform Act (1867) | Stephen Basdeo
The Reform League organised several rallies. At one of the Reform League’s major rallies, held in Trafalgar Square and attended by old-school militant radicals, the speakers began calling on working men to organise a general strike. Another ‘monster meeting’ held in May 1867 was so large that, despite being banned by the government, the police did not dare to intervene. The prospect of violence and armed conflict was rearing its head and it was all beginning to feel like 1848 again.
Painting a Pandemic: Domenico Gargiulo’s “Plague at Naples” (1656) | Stephen Basdeo
The scene is one of confusion as dead bodies lay in the street. In this picture, however, God looks on from above—does he feel sympathy for the plague victims, has he caused it, or is he simply indifferent?
Painting a Pandemic: Napoleon Visiting the Sick | Stephen Basdeo
The social anarchy resulting from plague are obviously a mainstay of pop culture depictions; times of crisis often bring out the worst in humanity. Yet they can also bring out the best in humanity as well, and it is one human, at his best and most heroic, whom Antoine-Jean Gros decided to represent on canvas in 1804. The man was Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French.