In this look at Americans and their politics, the authors argue for a more complex understanding of the space occupied by politics in 19th-century American society and culture.

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a new phenomenon in public monuments and civic ornamentation. Whereas in former times public statuary had customarily been reserved for 'warriors and statesmen, kings and rulers of men', a new trend was emerging for towns to commemorate their own citizens. As the subjects immortalised in stone and bronze broadened beyond the traditional ruling classes to include radicals and reformers, it necessitated a corresponding widening of the language and understanding of public statuary. Contested Sites explores the role of these commemorations in radical public life in Britain. Despite recent advances in the understanding of the importance of symbols in public discourse, political monuments have received little attention from historians. This is to be regretted, for commemorations are statements of public identity and memory that have their politics; they are 'embedded in complex class, gender and power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten)'. Examining monuments, plaques and tombstones commemorating a variety of popular movements and reforming individuals, the contributions in Contested Sites reveal the relations that went into the making of public memory in modern Britain and its radical tradition.

Popular Politics in Nineteenth Century England provides an accessible introduction to the culture of English popular politics between 1815 and 1900, the period from Luddism to the New Liberalism. This is an area that has attracted great historical interest and has undergone fundamental revision in the last two decades. Did the industrial revolution create the working class movement or was liberalism (which transcended class divisions) the key mode of political argument? Rohan McWilliam brings this central debate up to date for students of Nineteenth Century British History. He assesses popular ideology in relation to the state, the nation, gender and the nature of party formation, and reveals a much richer social history emerging in the light of recent historiographical developments.

This book takes a new look at the evolution of popular literature in Britain in the Romantic and Victorian periods. Making use of a wide range of archival and primary sources, he argues that radical politics played a decisive role in the transformation of popular literature. By charting the key moments in the history of 'cheap' literature, the book casts new light on the many neglected popular genres and texts: the 'pig's meat' anthology, the female-authored didactic tale, and Chartist fiction.