Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet An Autobiography   By: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)

ALTON LOCKE,

TAILOR AND POET

An Autobiography.

BY THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY,

CANON OF WESTMINSTER, RECTOR OF EVERSLEY, AND CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN AND PRINCE OF WALES,

NEW EDITION ,

WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR BY THOMAS HUGHES, ESQ., Q.C.,

AUTHOR OF "TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS."

CONTENTS.

PREFATORY MEMOIR

CHEAP CLOTHES AND NASTY

PREFACE TO THE UNDERGRADUATES OF CAMBRIDGE

PREFACE TO THE WORKING MEN OF GREAT BRITAIN

CHAPTER I. A POET'S CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER II. THE TAILORS' WORKROOM

CHAPTER III. SANDY MACKAYE

CHAPTER IV. TAILORS AND SOLDIERS

CHAPTER V. THE SCEPTIC'S MOTHER

CHAPTER VI. THE DULWICH GALLERY

CHAPTER VII. FIRST LOVE

CHAPTER VIII. LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE

CHAPTER IX. POETRY AND POETS

CHAPTER X. HOW FOLKS TURN CHARTISTS

CHAPTER XI. "THE YARD WHERE THE GENTLEMEN LIVE"

CHAPTER XII. CAMBRIDGE

CHAPTER XIII. THE LOST IDOL FOUND

CHAPTER XIV. A CATHEDRAL TOWN

CHAPTER XV. THE MAN OF SCIENCE

CHAPTER XVI. CULTIVATED WOMEN

CHAPTER XVII. SERMONS IN STONES

CHAPTER XVIII. MY FALL

CHAPTER XIX. SHORT AND SAD

CHAPTER XX. PEGASUS IN HARNESS

CHAPTER XXI. THE SWEATER'S DEN

CHAPTER XXII. AN EMERSONIAN SERMON

CHAPTER XXIII. THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

CHAPTER XXIV. THE TOWNSMAN'S SERMON TO THE GOWNSMAN

CHAPTER XXV. A TRUE NOBLEMAN

CHAPTER XXVI. THE TRIUMPHANT AUTHOR

CHAPTER XXVII. THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGEDY

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MEN WHO ARE EATEN

CHAPTER XXIX. THE TRIAL

CHAPTER XXX. PRISON THOUGHTS

CHAPTER XXXI. THE NEW CHURCH

CHAPTER XXXII. THE TOWER OF BABEL

CHAPTER XXXIII. A PATRIOT'S REWARD

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE TENTH OF APRIL

CHAPTER XXXV. THE LOWEST DEEP

CHAPTER XXXVI. DREAMLAND

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE TRUE DEMAGOGUE

CHAPTER XXXVIII. MIRACLES ASD SCIENCE

CHAPTER XXXIX. NEMESIS

CHAPTER XL. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE

CHAPTER XLI. FREEDOM, EQUALITY, AND BROTHERHOOD

PREFATORY MEMOIR.

The tract appended to this preface has been chosen to accompany this reprint of Alton Locke in order to illustrate, from another side, a distinct period in the life of Charles Kingsley, which stands out very much by itself. It may be taken roughly to have extended from 1848 to 1856. It has been thought that they require a preface, and I have undertaken to write it, as one of the few survivors of those who were most intimately associated with the author at the time to which the works refer.

No easy task; for, look at them from what point we will, these years must be allowed to cover an anxious and critical time in modern English history; but, above all, in the history of the working classes. In the first of them the Chartist agitation came to a head and burst, and was followed by the great movement towards association, which, developing in two directions and by two distinct methods represented respectively by the amalgamated Trades Unions, and Co operative Societies has in the intervening years entirely changed the conditions of the labour question in England, and the relations of the working to the upper and middle classes. It is with this, the social and industrial side of the history of those years, that we are mainly concerned here. Charles Kingsley has left other and more important writings of those years. But these are beside our purpose, which is to give some such slight sketch of him as may be possible within the limits of a preface, in the character in which he was first widely known, as the most outspoken and powerful of those who took the side of the labouring classes, at a critical time the crisis in a word, when they abandoned their old political weapons, for the more potent one of union and association, which has since carried them so far.