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Secret History of 'The International' Working Men's Association

Onslow Yorke

$88.95   $75.88

Hardback

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English
Spradabach Publishing
25 September 2025
Beneath the banner of 'universal brotherhood' gathered not the salt of the earth, but a drifting substratum of Europe's political underworld-exiles without country, thinkers without readers, zealots without gods. In this unsparing account, first published in 1872, Onslow Yorke guides the reader through the mean estaminets, brasseries, cellars, garrets, lodging rooms, and print shops where 'The International' first stirred: fetid dens of smoke and spittle-flecked oratory, where revolution was plotted like sacrament and every man's enemy sat within earshot. Far from the rhetoric of uplift, Yorke uncovers a world of intrigue and factional spite, where the language of emancipation masked envy, truculence, and paranoia. The dramatis personae emerge not from workshops, but from the age's margins-autodidacts with messianic visions, serial conspirators fuelled by grievance, and men who mistook destruction for destiny. Their meetings resembled séance rituals: damp, joyless, and rife with recrimination, presided over by figures who spoke always of the people, yet never seemed to know anyone normal. Yorke's tone is ironic and amusingly unflattering, and his Secret History-herein presented in an illustrated edition-the anatomy of a fungoid growth on the timber of post-1848 Europe. One that stubbornly persists and might never go away.
By:  
Imprint:   Spradabach Publishing
Dimensions:   Height: 216mm,  Width: 140mm,  Spine: 14mm
Weight:   367g
ISBN:   9781909606616
ISBN 10:   1909606618
Pages:   188
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Onslow Yorke is the pen-name of William Hepworth Dixon (1821-1879), an English historian, traveller, editor, and journalist. He was born in Manchester and educated at King Edward's School in Birmingham. Originally trained in law, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn but chose to pursue a literary career. He became known for his investigative writing on social issues, particularly prison conditions, and published several works on the subject. In 1853, he was appointed editor of The Athenæum, one of Victorian Britain's leading literary journals, a role he held until 1869. He travelled widely in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, and wrote popular historical and travel books including Her Majesty's Tower, The Holy Land, and New America. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and other bodies. Dixon used the pseudonym Onslow Yorke when writing on politically charged topics such as socialism and revolutionary movements.

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