In the 1860s global politics had a profound effect on a local economy when, during the American Civil War, the Union blockaded cotton exports from the Confederacy, and the main raw material of much of Lancashire's industry was cut off at a single stroke. The resulting mass unemployment and welfare crisis has been well documented by historians but the poetic response to this event has never been fully explored. Although nineteenth-century Lancashire poetry, particularly that written in dialect, has been studied by scholars, poetry of the Cotton Famine, including its unique aspects of multiple address and function, and fascinating reactions to the American Civil War and global economics, has received scant critical attention. Extrapolating from initial research, we estimate that between 900 and 1100 poems of short to moderate length are in existence which relate to the famine. Through newspapers, broadsheets, and published pamphlets, poetry was an important method of social discourse, and its unique forms of address performed functions including petition, consolation, political commentary, reportage, and memorialisation. Common themes include war, slavery, hunger, poverty, prostitution, unemployment, education, charity, alcohol use, and economics. This project will extend burgeoning recent interest in labouring-class literature by looking at the intersections between literature, regionality, and global politics. Initial research has identified relevant material in contemporary local newspapers, as well as archival material and pamphlets, broadsheets and collections. These full texts, all out of copyright, will form a fully searchable database with accompanying bibliographical information, annotation, essays, and soundfiles. The texts will be organised within the database by locality. For example, Lancastrian towns including Preston, Blackburn, and Burnley will have their own pages, and there will be pages which cover poems with miscellaneous provenance, or poems which were published in abolitionist newspapers in the United States, or poems from contemporary collections. A keyword function will provide full search capability and cross-referencing. The database will have soundfile capability to include recitations of standard English and dialect poetry (which we estimate comprises about 10% of the total texts) and musical performances of the work where appropriate (a small minority of the material is presented as song and occasionally specifies the accompanying tune). The investigators have already attracted enthusiastic interest from performers including Jennifer Reid and the folk group Faustus. Jennifer Reid will be involved in twelve events aimed at the general public and school-age children across the Lancashire region which will promote the database through presentations, vocal and musical performance, and workshops. Faustus will be commissioned to arrange and record material associated with the project in order to promote the database. The project will also be working closely with Lancashire County Council Heritage Learning to promote the database to teachers in the region and train them how to use it. Schoolchildren will be involved in programmes to search for relevant poetry in their local libraries (many local newspaper archives are held on microfilm), and so to contribute directly to the full-text aspect of the database. This process will be managed and edited by the principal investigator. The website accompanying the database will include contextual information and essays composed by the principal investigator, co-investigator, and postdoctoral researcher which will be open access and directed towards the general public and scholars. The texts that will form the database will also comprise the basis for scholarly output from the principal investigator, co-investigator, and postdoctoral researcher which will be published in academic journals.