The fifth annual John Halstead Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Professor John Goodridge, President of the John Clare Society. 

Organised by the Society for the Study of Labour History and taking place at the John Rylands Library, Manchester on Saturday 13 June 2026, the lecture will be titled ‘Reading by glow worm: the struggles of labouring-class poets’. All are welcome, but you must register to secure a place as numbers are limited.

Book a free ticket for this event.

John Goodridge is Emeritus Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University and President of the John Clare Society. He has been researching eighteenth to nineteenth-century English labouring-class poetry for many years and has made significant discoveries in the field, championing these often overlooked writers for their literary and historical value, editing and recovering their work. 

In this lecture he will examine some of the struggles these writers faced, and show how they dealt with them in their lives and their poetry.

The John Halstead Memorial Lecture is held annually in memory of the late John Halstead, who was among the earliest members of the Society for the Study of Labour History and served in a variety of posts over many decades, including as editor of Labour History Review and Vice-President.

Book a free ticket for this event.

About Professor John Goodridge

John Goodridge is Emeritus Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University and the President of the John Clare Society. A respected figure in the field of English working-class literature, his latest book, co-edited with Adam Bridgen, is Essays on British Working-Class and Radical Writing from 1700 (University of London Press (2025). Other books include Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (Cambridge, 1994), John Clare and Community (Cambridge, 2013), John Clare the Trespasser (Nottingham, 2016), co-edited with Professor Kelsey Thornton, and A Cambridge History of Working-Class Writing, co-edited with Bridget Keegan (New York, 2017). He was formerly Editorial Director of Trent Editions and edited a number of volumes including Poems of a Nottingham Lace-Runner, by Mary Bailey (Five Leaves, 2022), He is active online, writing and editing ‘A Catalogue of Labouring-class Poetry’, ‘Rowley’s Ghost’ and ‘John Clare Resources’; he also runs the ‘History of British Working-Class Literature’ Facebook Group. John Goodridge profile on the Nottingham Trent University website

About John Halstead (1936-2021)

Obituary on the SSLH website.