"The Political Pilgrim's Progress"

1839 [Doubleday, Thomas] (1790-1870). “The Political Pilgrim’s Progress.” Northern Liberator 2.66, 68 - 69, 71, 74 - 76 (January 19, February 2 - 9, February 23, March 16 - 30, 1839): 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3. Rpt. with illustrations as The Political Pilgrim’s Progress. From the Northern Liberator. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Eng.: Ptd. at the Northern Liberator Office by John Bell, 1839; and in Chartist Fiction. Thomas Doubleday, The Political Pilgrim’s Progress. Thomas Martin Wheeler, Sunshine and Shadow. Ed. Ian Haywood (Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate, 1999), 17-59 with “Editor’s Notes (59-63). Doubleday is given as the author in Horst Rossler, “Literatur und politische agitation im Chartismus. Eine Studie zu Thomas Doubledays Political Pilgrims Progress.” Englisch Amerikanische Studien 3 (1981): 3 (1981): 108-21. This is accepted by H. Gustav Klaus, The Literature of Labour: Two Hundred Years of Working-Class Writing (Brighton, Sussex, Eng.: The Harvester Press, 1985), 51-52, but Haywood, in his “Editor’s Introduction” (3), argues that Robert Blakey (1795-1878) was also involved in writing it. L

An allegory in which Radical makes his way with his family from the City of Plunder to the City of Reform. While meeting much opposition and overcoming many temptations, he arrives in the City of Reform, which has no direct taxes, no professional politicians, no standing army, and no distinctions between rich and poor. It has a citizen’s militia and requires its men aged 20 to 50 to be armed both physically and morally.