Reading and writing the Nothern Star, 1837-1847

The Chartist movement (c. 1835-1855) was the first mass suffrage movement in Victorian Britain. This thesis explores the workings of the leading newspaper of the Chartist movement, the Northern Star (1837-1852). While several articles and book chapters discuss aspects of the Star as a means by which Chartist organisations were kept abreast of developments in the movement, this thesis instead argues that the Star is not only of significance to historians of Chartism, but to periodical studies more widely. Focussing on the first decade of the Star’s print run, this thesis argues that the Northern Star straddled several spectra of identity, including both ‘local’ and ‘national’, ‘general’ and ‘Chartist’. These identities, furthermore, were reflexively defined by readers and editors, in a process of dialogue through the ‘Readers & Correspondents’ column. The Star was a politically radical paper, but advocated self-improvement strategies usually attributed to the middle classes in order to circumvent educational and financial barriers to suffrage for working-class men. The Star also marked a turning point in the development of early Victorian periodicals, maintaining the radical imagery and linguistic style of the unstamped press, with news and miscellany features pre-dating the ‘new’ journalism of the 1870s. This thesis argues that the Northern Star was not just a newspaper, but a tool for the creation, maintenance, and strategizing of working-class political communities.