of the poorer classes and the improvement of the lot of women. Understood in her day as an influential social reformer with a Journal
boasting a very impressive circulation,
has disappeared from discussions of working-class and Chartist writing.
was a highly popular poet, journalist, and editor of the mid-nineteenth century, whose songs in particular circulated very widely: set to music, performed in drawing-rooms, reprinted in single sheets, and collected in manuscript. Her verse often seems to speak for the middle-class majority: patriotic, nostalgic, conservative about specific issues and in love with vague ideas of chivalry, valour, and sacrifice. In other poems, however, some written for specific occasions, she reflects a concern for the underprivileged or oppressed. Her prose journalism, while understood by some to presage the format of the ladies' magazine, also manifests an ongoing commitment to the