For someone who took the better part of a decade to publish their first monograph (in 2020), the appearance of a second in less than two years might be construed as rushed. But one of the main reasons why my last monograph took so long to appear was because I was also working on this book alongside. In some respects, Democratic passions emerged out of the research I undertook for my previous book, which, among other things, explored the 'emotional' engagement of Chartists with key antecedent

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... ical heroes. In other respects, the genesis of the present book predated this, and traces its origins to my exposure as a student and then as a lecturer to cultural history at the University of York in the early 2000s. It was my good fortune to take on the teaching of an undergraduate module 'Mind, Ritual and Anthropology'. It was while exploring the first word in that module title and, it must be confessed, in the frantic casting around for material to make what was largely a medieval-based module into a more familiar and comfortably modern one that I stumbled across a newly published book: William Reddy's Navigation of Feeling (2003), as well as the beginnings of the emergence of a new field, the history of emotions. At that time (and clearly in defiance of my training as a cultural historian) I remember thinking, surely an emotion was the same thing in the present as it was at any time in the past (or indeed anywhere on the globe)? The discovery of just how mistaken that assumption was has proved endlessly liberating and has allowed me to approach afresh the well-traversed field of popular politics in nineteenth-century Britain, though with what success I leave for the reader to judge. In hindsight, what was even more fortuitous was that I co-taught that module with Rob Boddice, now one of the leading authorities on the history of emotions. As the references in this book will attest, Rob's work has been a major influence and source of inspiration. To those unfamiliar with popular radicalism in nineteenth-century Britain, the scope of this book may seem rather limited. After all, it is not even a study of radicalism, but something more specific called popular radicalism (defined in the introduction). As those who do know this field will