William Cobbett

William Cobbett was widely considered to be one of the most contentious figures who animated the political scene in the early 19th century. A self-educated man, “born and bred at the tail of the plough”, he equipped himself for public life in the hard school of experience, scorning what he called “those dens of dunces called Colleges and Universities”. Although he was always a storm-centre of controversy, Cobbett was no mere ‘agitator’. He enlisted in the Army and rose to the most difficult of all ranks to attain and hold—that of Sergeant-Major. His warm-hearted concern for the underdog was the motive which led him, after leaving the Army, to compile, for the benefit of his old comrades, the book called “The Soldier’s Friend.”

In Cobbett’s time, the blight of the Industrial Revolution was settling upon the English countryside and, in the quest for firsthand knowledge, Cobbett set out on the tour of investigation which he recorded in his celebrated “Rural Rides”. He founded the “Political Register” in which, for 30 years, he set an exuberant standard of political journalism, and on all the major issues of his time, and especially that of Parliamentary Reform, he proved a formidable protagonist and pamphleteer.

This biography of Cobbett is an animated study of one of the most vivid and picturesque figures in English social history.