This article provides the first detailed account of Mark Hovell’s
The Chartist Movement, focusing on the overall achievement of
the work as published in 1918, contemporary reactions to the circumstances of
its production, and the ways in which Hovell’s research cemented
twentieth-century dominant narratives around the rise and fall of Chartism. The
article also offers a counterfactual evaluation of Hovell’s manuscript,
focusing on the probable direction of his vision of Chartism, and suggesting how
the work completed by Hovell (had he lived) might have looked compared with the
version eventually produced by Tout.