Friendship, Cosmopolitan Connections and Late Victorian Socialist Songbook Culture

Abstract

On 27 August 1887, utopian socialist Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) issued a call in the Socialist League's Commonweal for contributions from readers towards the socialist songbook he was in the process of preparing. He wanted 'good words matched to good tunes' and added a further remark that songs 'in actual use among Socialist bodies will be specially welcome'. In his otherwise bleak and depressing existence in Sheffield's grim industrial surrounds, Carpenter gained creative succour from the process of compiling a collection of songs he would christen Chants of Labour. 'It was a queer experience', Carpenter recalled, 'collecting these songs of hope and enthusiasm...in the midst of these gloomy and discordant conditions'. Published in 1888, Chants of Labour was an immediate success and determined in large part the contents of the subsequent generation of socialist songbooks.