Manchester University Press Ballads and Songs of Peterloo

This book presents a collection of poems and songs written in the immediate aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. It is the first anthology of its kind, and includes over seventy poems, originally published as broadsides, or in radical periodicals such as the moderate Examiner and the ultra-radical Medusa, with many from the most prolific publisher of Peterloo verse, the Manchester Observer. Although the reading of the texts is supported by headnotes and footnotes, the poems are allowed to stand alone, in order to convey as much of the original publication as possible, and to preserve their authenticity. Following an introduction outlining the events before, during and after the massacre, as well as background information on the radical press and broadside ballad, the poems are grouped into six thematic sections. Grouped in this manner, rather than chronologically or by publication, one cannot avoid the similarities between the poems, from the repeated images of brutalised women to numerous exhortations to rise and avenge the slaughter. The poems and songs which tumbled onto the pages of newspapers, journals and broadsides in the ensuing weeks and months convey the range of emotions felt by a downtrodden people: rage, grief, righteousness and vengeance. Through poetry and song, they sought and continue to seek to commemorate and condemn, arouse and avenge, their power undimmed. Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy, written only weeks after the massacre but not published until 1832, is included as an appendix in acknowledgement of its continuing significance to the representation of Peterloo.