A Manchester Man Abroad: Richard Cobden and the West Riding of Yorkshire
Richard Cobden, the prominent Manchester radical and leader of the Anti-Corn Law League, occupied one of the two parliamentary seats for the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1847 until 1857, a substantial proportion of his active political career. This lecture explores Cobden’s relationship with West Riding politics, focusing in particular on the period from the foundation of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839 to Cobden’s defeat at Huddersfield during the General Election of 1857. In the process it demonstrates the opportunities for further research on Cobden provided by the new open access database of Cobden’s letters (www.cobdenletters.org).
Professor Simon Morgan is Head of History at Leeds Beckett University. He is the Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘Letters of Richard Cobden Online: An exploration in Active Citizenship’. Along with Professor Anthony Howe, he was also co-editor of the four-volume selected edition of the Letters of Richard Cobden published by Oxford University Press in 2006-2015. His recent monograph, Celebrities, Heroes and Champions: Popular Politicians in the Age of Reform, 1810-1867, was runner up for the Social History Society book prize in 2023 and is now available in paperback.
Lecture on the 20th March, 2025
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