The Lancashire Cotton Famine, which affected hundreds of thousands of people in the north-west of England between 1861 and 1865, was the direct result of the American Civil War. Although historians have documented the effects of unprecedented levels of unemployment on the region, it is only recently that the discovery of hundreds of poems published in local newspapers, many by the workers themselves, completed the picture.

Professor Simon Rennie and Ruth-Anne Walbank, who have been instrumental in uncovering this lost working-class poetry and making it available again through the Cotton Famine Poetry database and the Collected Poems of the Burnley blacksmith William Cunliffe, explore the satirical, politically aware and moving literature of this crucial period in Lancashire’s history. Jack Southern provides historical context.

Simon Rennie is Associate Professor of Victorian Poetry at the University of Exeter. He led the team that created the Cotton Famine Poetry database. www.cottonfaminepoetry.exeter.ac.uk/res/databases/

Ruth-Anne Walbank is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick studying nineteenth-century literature. She created Weaving History: The Cotton Famine Poetry Podcast. 

www.open.spotify.com/show/3TA1FMHJwLJ2FVgynWYV38

Jack Southern is Lecturer in Public History at the University of Central Lancashire.

Weaving History: Simon Rennie and Ruth-Anne Walbank