The Preston Strike in Literature: Dickens, Gaskell and Bamford

Abstract

This article maps the fictional responses of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Samuel Bamford to the Preston dispute, arguing that they were based more on cultural sources than reportage. It includes the first scholarly analysis of Bamford’s contribution, three linked dialogues published in Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper in 1854. This article also examines the relationship of Victorian fiction and the reading public to unrest and northern working-class life, demonstrating how ideology trumped the facts. Dickens’s priority was well crafted fiction. Gaskell attempted to base her fiction on reality, but only partly extricated herself from the assumptions of the period. Bamford, living in London at the time, was bound by his need to appeal to his middle-class audience, because of his precarious position and physical distance. He projected personal experience from an earlier period onto the Preston dispute, reinforcing the assumption that it was a strike rather than a lock-out. He knew no more of Preston than Dickens. It would take the cotton famine to shift prejudices against the northern working classes.