Edward Smith's William Cobbett is a lucid biographical study of one of nineteenth-century England's most combative public voices: journalist, pamphleteer, agrarian radical, and indefatigable critic of corruption. The book traces Cobbett's progress from rural Hampshire origins through military service, exile, editorial warfare, and parliamentary reform agitation, setting his life within the turbulent context of post-Revolutionary politics, industrial change, and the struggle over representation. Smith's style is measured, documentary, and interpretive, attentive both to Cobbett's vigorous prose and to the contradictions of his public career. Smith writes as a biographer concerned not merely with events but with the formation of political character. His interest in Cobbett appears rooted in the Victorian and Edwardian fascination with self-made men, dissenting journalism, and the moral force of plain English. By emphasizing Cobbett's rural imagination, distrust of financial power, and mastery of polemic, Smith helps explain why this controversial figure remained central to debates about liberty, class, and national identity. This volume is recommended to readers interested in political biography, radical journalism, and the making of modern Britain. It offers a thoughtful introduction to Cobbett's life while inviting renewed attention to the power of prose as an instrument of public argument. This enriched edition has been carefully crafted to add value to your reading experience. - Hand-picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Autorentext
Edward Smith (18391919) was an English author and biographer. A Fellow of the Statistical Society, he was bestowed with its Howard Medal in 1875, for an essay on "The State of the Dwellings of the Poor". Some of his other well-known works are "England and America after Independence" and "The Life of Sir Joseph Banks".
Zusammenfassung
This edition shows us the incredible life and work of William Cobbett (1763-1835), an English author, independent journalist and Member of Parliament. As an intrinsically conservative journalist, he was frustrated by the shady British political establishment of the times and gave strong support to agrarians. He, with a popular agrarian faction, argued that reforming Parliament, including abolishing "rotten boroughs", unnecessary foreign activity and suppression of wages would promote internal peace and ease the poverty of farm labourers and smallholders. He relentlessly sought an end to borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" (overpaid and sometimes corrupt bureaucrats, public servants and stockbrokers), also dismissing British Jews in a typecast by the same token. Early in life he was a soldier and loyal devotee of King and country, but he later pushed for Radicalism, which helped bring about the Reform Act 1832 and his election that year as one of two MPs for the newly enfranchised borough of Oldham. His much-interwoven polemics cover subjects from political reform to religion. He argued that economic improvement could support growth in global population, as an anti-Malthusian. His writing coined the metaphor "a red herring".