‘Packed tightly with the strong meat of history and political economy’: Mark Hovell and Histories of Chartism

Abstract

This article provides the first detailed account of Mark Hovell's The Chartist Movement, focusing on the overall achievement of the work as published in 1918, contemporary reactions to the circumstances of its production, and the ways in which Hovell's research cemented twentieth-century dominant narratives around the rise and fall of Chartism. The article also offers a counterfactual evaluation of Hovell's manuscript, focusing on the probable direction of his vision of Chartism, and suggesting how the work completed by Hovell (had he lived) might have looked compared with the version eventually produced by Tout.