“If ‘Mr G.W. Reynolds’ be the Mr. Reynolds who is the author of the
Mysteries of London, and who took the chair for a mob in Trafalgar Square before they set forth on a window-breaking expedition”, wrote Dickens to W.C. Macready in 1849, “I hold his to be a name with which no lady’s, and no gentleman’s, should be associated.” The feeling was more than mutual. Dickens is here referring to the open-air Chartist meeting of March 1848, when police attempts to break up this illegal gathering sent the vast crowd surging down the Mall and through St. James’s Park to shouts of “To the Palace!” When the demonstration, which had reached the palace gates, subsided, Chairman Reynolds was carried in triumph to his house in Wellington Street, where he addressed the crowd from his…
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Citation: Carver, Stephen. "G. W. M. Reynolds". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5614, accessed 20 April 2024.]
