Profile
Biography
MA, PhD (Cantab), FRHistS, FHA
Edward Royle was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, and educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge (1962-1968). He studied for his PhD under Dr George Kitson Clark of Trinity College, his thesis subsequently being expanded and published as Victorian Infidels (1974). A sequel, Radicals, Freethinkers and Republicans, was published in 1980.
After holding a Fellowship at Selwyn College, Cambridge for four years he came to York in 1972, rising through the ranks to become Head of Department in 1988-1991. He retired in 2004, having supervised over 30 research students during his teaching career at York.
Research
Overview
Edward’s main areas of interest are popular freethought, radicalism, and religion in Britain since the eighteenth century.
His publications have included Chartism (3rd ed 1996), Robert Owen and the Commencement of the Millennium (1998), Revolutionary Britannia (2000) and a general Social History of Modern Britain (3rd ed 2012).
He edited the manuscript Visitation Returns of the Clergy for Archbishop Thomson’s 1865 visitation of York diocese (2006) and Bishop Bickersteth 1858 visitation of Ripon diocese (2009), thus completing a survey of the Church of England throughout almost the whole of mid-Victorian Yorkshire.
He has also revised for publication Ellen Wilson’s study of The Great Yorkshire Election of 1807 (2015).
His most recent work was editing a collection of essays, Power in the Land, to which he also contributed, to mark the centenary of the unprecedented purchase of the Ramsden family’s Huddersfield Estate by the Corporation in 1920 (2020).
He is a former editor of the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Chairman of the Conference of Regional and Local Historians, and President of the Wesley Historical Society (until 2020) and has served for over 50 years as a Methodist Local Preacher.
In 2021 (postponed from 2020) he is to deliver the Annual Luddite Lecture for the University of Huddersfield, and the Sheldon Memorial Lecture at the University of York.
In 2022 he delivered the Annual Luddite Lecture at the University of Huddersfield, and the Sheldon Memorial Lecture at the University of York. The latter is to be published in 2023 by the Borthwick Institute under the title James Pigott Pritchett (1789-1868): Congregational Deacon and Architect of Victorian York and Yorkshire.
