This edition of over 600 letters written by or for the poor in the early
nineteenth-century Cumbrian town of Kirkby Lonsdale provides a unique
window onto the experiences, views and conditions of a much-neglected
group in English society. At the most human level, these letters are
replete with sickness and suffering, the inability of mothers and
fathers to fulfil their basic roles, claims that people were starving
and naked, writers who were at death's door and those who were homeless
and desperate.
The letters also provide a sense of the emotional landscape of those who
have largely escaped the attention of historians of emotion. Here we
find anger, suffering, gratitude, hopelessness, fear, humiliation and
humility, largely in the words and voice of those who experienced such
emotions. And above all we find agency - a group of poor people and
their advocates who were willing and able, indeed saw it as their right,
to challenge those who administered welfare and attempt to shape a
system which notionally at least afforded them no power. Here, then, are
ordinary lives played out on a canvas that will be appealing to a wide
readership.