A visit to the Kensal Green Chartists

I paid a visit to Kensal Green Cemetery yesterday in search of Chartists. Feargus O’Connor and Henry Hetherington were both buried there, and G.W.M.Reynolds is in the catacombs. There are other Chartist connections there too, and I was delighted to be able to find everything I wanted - with one exception.

I’ve written about the visit on here in Meet the Kensal Green Chartists, and added a map for anyone interested in making a similar pilgrimage.

Memorial to Henry Hetherington.

Join the GWM Reynolds Society

The newly formed international G.W.M. Reynolds Society exists to promote the enjoyment and study of the work of GWM. Reynolds.

Best-selling fiction writer and rival to Charles Dickens, Chartist, radical, newspaper editor, and entrepreneur, Reynolds was famous (or perhaps infamous) in his day.

Although he is less well-known now, his reputation has been growing for some time. Emerging out of a collaboration between the University of Roehampton, London, UK, and DePaul University, Chicago, US, the Reynolds Society aims to bring Reynolds even more to the attention of the wider public and scholarly community.

Initially, the Reynolds Society will facilitate connections between those reading and studying Reynolds, through its database of scholars and experts, and the blog. In the future, this activity may lead to events and collaborations such as the 2014 bicentenary event Remarkable Reynolds, held in London at Westminster Archives Centre.

To become a member, please email Jennifer Conary with your name and host institution.

If you wish to be added to the online database of Scholars and Experts, which will be hosted on this website, please also provide:

• your area of interest (100 words max)
• any publications you have done on Reynolds (3 max)

Please also sign up to follow the blog for the latest society news, member research, cfps, and more.

Remarkable Reynolds: celebrating the 200th birthday of a Chartist

G W M Reynolds' birthday cake (made by Kathy Newport
of Cracking Cakes)

The Chartist journalist and author G W M Reynolds was a sociable chap, who every year for two decades closed down his Reynolds Newspaper business for two days to take the entire staff for an annual “festival” of food, drink and games.

So hopefully he would have appreciated the celebration of his life and work held to mark his bicentenary at the weekend which culminated in sparkling wine all round and a slice of 200th birthday cake.

George William McArthur Reynolds was by turns a prominent teetotal campaigner and ardent opponent of the teetotal cause, a religious sceptic, lifelong republican, Chartist orator and journalist, and quite possibly the most prolific author of the Victorian era.

Remarkable Reynolds: join the bicentenary celebration

Here is an update from the organisers of the Remarkable Reynolds event taking place on 26 July 2014. Full details below if you would like to go along...

FINAL PROGRAMME

'Remarkable Reynolds: Dickens's Radical Rival', Saturday 26th July 2014, Westminster Archives Centre

We are delighted to announce that 'Remarkable Reynolds: Dickens's Radical Rival' will now close with cake and a wine reception to toast Reynolds's Bicentenary. See http://remarkablereynolds.wordpress.com/

Remarkable Reynolds: Dickens's radical rival

The University of Roehampton and The City of Westminster Archives Centre present; 'Remarkable Reynolds: Dickens's Radical Rival'

Saturday 26 July 2014
City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann's Street, London SW1P 2DE
A free day of talks and readings to celebrate the bicentenary of GWM Reynolds

In search of GWM Reynolds

I am delighted to report that the last resting place of the Chartist journalist George William MacArthur Reynolds has now been added to the Where are they now? page on Chartist Ancestors.

GWM Reynolds (as he was more usually known) first achieved notoriety in the Chartist movement after taking the chair at a public meeting in Trafalgar Square in March 1848 which descended into several days of rioting.

However, he later served as a member of the National Charter Association's executive committee and was a prominent figure in the NCA’s turn towards socialism at its 1851 Convention.

These days, however, if Reynolds is remembered at all it is as the publisher of a succession of newspapers, culminating in the proto-tabloid Reynolds Weekly Newspaper, and as the author of such highly successful penny-dreadful novels as The Mysteries of London.

A longer biography and links to full-text versions of some of GWM Reynolds’ works can be found on Wikipaedia.

Reynolds’ grave was rediscovered by Dick Collins, an admirer of GWM as a writer, activist and socialist, who came across his coffin in a catacomb at Kensal Green Cemetery and kindly tipped me off.

Feargus O’Connor, Henry Hetherington and Thomas Slingsby Duncombe are also buried there, though Collins notes that “being Reynolds he managed to baggs himself a place indoors”.

Collins also kindly supplied the picture of Reynolds used in this post. It comes from his “Coral Island”.