ABSTRACT
Manchester magnetised the attention of contemporary observers: from Britain, Europe and America they came to witness the pioneer of a new era. Proclaiming their opinions in diaries, articles, books and novels, they gave the city in the second quarter of the nineteenth century a higher profile than any other in the world. Seeking to comprehend the new reality, commentators produced a powerful image which enthroned Manchester in the public consciousness as the archetype of a new order. Not simply foisted upon them, but in part created by Manchester men themselves, this image powerfully influenced the way in which leading Mancunians thought about their city, and it has endured in the treatment of Manchester by historians almost to the present day. As Richard Dennis has argued, this picture was predominantly an ideological creation; it was designed to explain the rise, for good or ill, of working class radicalism, of socialism and chartism.1 Nevertheless, it established its own reality.
