The piston and the pen: poetry and the Victorian industrial worker

Abstract: This article discusses some preliminary findings from the collaborative AHRC-funded research project ‘Piston, Pen & Press: Literary Cultures in the Industrial Workplace’. It uses examples of Scottish poets, and detailed study of two writers who were factory workers from the Bradford and Keighley area in Yorkshire, to argue that Victorian industrial workers were highly engaged with cultures of poetic production and deployed verse for a variety of political, social, and personal ends.

Keywords: Victorian, working-class, poetry, industry, Scotland, Yorkshire.

Warton Lecture, read 30 April 2019