Nation of Petitioners

Henry J. Miller is Associate Professor (Research) at Durham University. He has published widely on the political culture of modern Britain, and led projects on petitions funded by the AHRC and Leverhulme Trust. His first book, Politics Personified: Portraiture, Caricature, and Visual Culture in Britain, 1830–1880, was published in 2015 by Manchester University Press. He is co-editor of Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America: From the Late Medieval Period to the Present, which will be published by Oxford University Press for the British Academy.

• Introduction; Part I. Petitions: 1. Petitions to the House of Commons I: scale and trends; 2. Petitions to the House of Commons II: issues; 3. Subscriptional cultures and petitionary documents; Part II. Petitioners: 4. The right to petition; 5. Petitioners I: collective identities; 6. Petitioners II: petitioning communities; Part III. Petitioning: 7. The practice of petitioning; 8. Mass petitioning; 9. Petitioning and representation; 10. Petitioning and political culture in an age of democratisation; Conclusion; Select bibliography; Index.

'… an important study of a relatively neglected area of British politics: petitions. … Recommended.' P. Stansky, Choice