Ernest Jones, "the Chartist Poet," is best known for his leadership in the democratic working-class movement. He came to Chartism late and is credited with having prolonged its life for a decade by virtue of his personal energy and optimism. The failure of the movement for the vote led Jones in the 1850s to advocate socialism; his friends Marx and Engels considered him "the only educated Englishman among the politicians who was ... entirely on our side." Jones's political reputation has overshadowed his achievement as a poet and novelist; yet it was in Chartism that he found the audience and the subject matter for his best writing, and his rapid rise to leadership owed much to the popularity of his songs and poems among the Chartist rank and file.

There was little in Ernest Charles Jones's background to suggest his future political path. He was the only child of...