I’ve put up a hand-crafted, semantic XHTML version of Henry Tobit Evans’s book Rebecca and Her Daughters: Being a History of the Agrarian Disturbances in Wales Known as “The Rebecca Riots” on The Picket Line. Enjoy.
If you’d prefer to read this in paperback, pick it up under the title Rebecca Riots! True Tales of the Transvestite Terrorists who Vexed Victoria.
The book was left unfinished at the author’s death and was then completed by his daughter. The editing and editorial voice are both uneven, but the book is a valuable collection of source material and a good chronology of the Rebeccaite uprising.
I found the story fascinating. This was a widespread, well-organized, sophisticated peasant uprising that enjoyed enormous success in the face of strong government efforts at suppression and subversion and various attempts by establishment liberals to reroute the discontent into ineffectual legal channels. For a time, “Rebecca” was Queen of Wales, the sovereign of her nation.
