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REFORMING DISCOURSES AND POLITICAL PRACTICE IN BRITAIN, 1760–1872 History of suffrage, 1760–1867. Edited by Anna Clark and Sarah Richardson. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000. 6 vols. Pp. xxi+351, 320, 348, 396, 341, 346. ISBN 1-85196-706-0. £495.00. Language, print and electoral politics, 1790–1832: Newcastle-under-Lyme broadsides. Edited by Hannah Barker and David Vincent. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001. ISBN 0-85115-810-2. £45.00. The diaries of Samuel Bamford. Edited by Martin Hewitt and Robert Poole. Thrupp, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2000. Pp. xxxi+383. ISBN 0-7509-1735-0. £55.00.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 May 2004
Abstract
‘The word [reform] is a singularly vague one; it means every thing, and any thing; it conveys no positive idea whatever; but seems to have a different acceptation in each different mouth.’ So declared John Walsh, an opponent of parliamentary reform in his 1831 pamphlet, Popular opinions on parliamentary reform. Walsh's observation, which shrewdly identifies a recurring semantic problem for historians of the early nineteenth century, is but one of many illuminating texts to be reprinted in the History of suffrage, 1760–1867, edited by Anna Clark and Sarah Richardson. This publication, when read alongside the other two volumes under consideration, Hannah Barker and David Vincent's Language, print and electoral politics, 1790–1832, which reprints a plethora of electoral ephemera from pre-reform Newcastle-under-Lyme; and Martin Hewitt and Robert Poole's The diaries of Samuel Bamford provides fascinating insights into the constellation of vocabularies, strategies, and concerns that comprised the reforming project.
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- 2004 Cambridge University Press