Periodical Form and Chatterton's Commune, the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher (1884–1895) ‘the most Unique Production of the—Nineteenth Century’

Abstract

Chatterton's Commune, the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher (1884–1895) was a journal that troubled the boundaries of nineteenth-century print culture. Ostensibly a periodical, with all the associated markers of form and content (from masthead to ‘To Correspondents' column), it might alternatively be considered an expanded broadside, a pamphlet series, or even a proto-zine. This article's close consideration of this publication elaborates upon what the periodical form enabled for Daniel Chatterton—its impoverished editor, sole author, typesetter, printer, and distributor—as a tool of political agitation during the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the publication's materialities of print and production, its resistance to ephemerality (of both print and working-class lives), and Chatterton's aspirations towards radical communality, it argues that by pushing at the limits of freedom of thought Chatterton's Commune brings into focus the perceived power of periodicals at the end of the nineteenth century.