Kmflett's Blog

letters & poems in the Northern Star: why the latter & not the former?

Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey have edited a book of poetry and the former Labour leader has posted on X that everyone has poetry in them to write. No doubt and some of mine can be found on this blog (quality indeterminate)

in what was the world’s first large circulation working class newspaper, the Chartist Northern Star, both correspondents and successive Editors preferred the form of poetry to letters.

The Star published poetry in every weekly issue, but letters were much less common. Mostly correspondents were noted with a very brief response rather than publication.

Mike Sanders published in the Victorian Periodicals Review 39/1 a comprehensive survey of poetry pubished in the Norther Star between 1838 and 1852. The early period from 1838-41 in particular saw a large amount of poetry submitted as the new Chartist movement found its voice. The Editor Hill sometimes felt overwhelmed and on one occasion printed that he would select the best of the poems submitted and burn the rest.

Even so poetry continued to feature in the Star under the Editorships of George Julian Harney and Ernest Jones- both keen on poetry (Jones wrote it)and quite prominently so. Sanders argues that the Star made efforts to improve the quality.

The Year of Revolutions, 1848, is interesting in that numbers of the poems submitted could also used as lyrics, put to music, and sung on demonstrations.

The issue I’m researching- via particularly looking through the digital version of the Northern Star (free on-line) is why the preference for poems above letters and when did it change.

The Star always carried letters, sometimes quite lengthy ones but they didn’t have the catchet of poems. Perhaps they were seen as individual expressions rather than words that captured the mood of a moment. Perhaps letter writers were seen as more middle-class- having the time and supposed intellect to express a view..

Thoughts gratefully received and, where appropriate, credited.