William Cobbett ( 1763-03-09 – 1835-06-18 ) was an English politician, agriculturist, journalist and pamphleteer, writing first in the Tory and then in the Radical cause. Contents 1 Sourced 1.1 A Grammar of the English Language (1818) 1.2 Advice to...
The English radical journalist and politician William Cobbett (1763-1835) was an advocate of parliamentary reform and a critic of the new industrial urban age. William Cobbett was born at Farnham, Surrey, on March 9, 1763. His father, a small farmer,...
Thomas Carlyle called William Cobbett "The pattern John Bull of his century, strong as the rhinosceros, and with singular humanities and genialities shining through his thick skin" (Essay on Scott, 1838). Cobbett was a leading advocate of parliamentary...
Blunt, forthright, and insufficiently refined to please some contemporaries, William Cobbett continues to challenge modern assumptions. Some readers, regarding his style more highly than his politics, have detached Cobbett from his historical context...
William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was a political pamphleter, farmer and prolific journalist. He was born at Farnham, Surrey. He thought that the reform of Parliament and the abolition of the rotten boroughs would help cure the poverty...
Cobbett's vision of landscape scenery in 'Rural Rides' differs significantly from the pantheistic and idealistic Romanticism of his contemporaries. Cobbett's work establishes his mental link between riding and written description and his habit of systematic classification. Specific views of scenery are examined as microcosmic...
Hazlitt wrote of Cobbett in The spirit of the age, 1825, that he was 'a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country. He is not only unquestionably the most powerful political writer of the present day but one of the best...
Saintsbury was a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century English literary historian and critic. Hugely prolific, he composed histories of English and European literature as well as numerous critical works on individual authors, styles, and periods. In the following essay, originally published in Macmillan's Magazine in 1891, Saintsbury discusses Cobbett's career and significance.
Spater's William Cobbett: The Poor Man's Friend (1982) is considered the definitive biography of Cobbett. In the following excerpt, he offers a broad, thematic survey of Cobbett's writings.
In the following chapter from his critical biography of Cobbett, Sambrook examines Rural Rides and Advice to Young Men, quoting at length from each to illustrate the characteristics of Cobbett's thought.
