The Oppositional Aesthetics of Chartist Fiction: Reading against the Middle-Class Novel

Redressing a gap in Chartism studies, Rob Breton focuses on the fiction that emerged from the movement, placing it in the context of the Victorian novel and reading it against the works aimed at the middle-class. Breton examines works by well-known writers such as Ernest Jones and Thomas Cooper alongside those of obscure or anonymous writers, rejecting the charge that Chartist fiction fails aesthetically, politically, and culturally. Rather, Breton suggests, it constitutes a type of anti-fi...