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, Surr...
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William Cobbett was a British subject who fled to the United States in 1793 as a refugee from the violence of the French Revolution. While living in America, Cobbett became embroiled in the political ...
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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, 18...
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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,...
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Jeffrey was a founder and editor of the Edinburgh Review, one of the most influential nineteenth-century British magazines. A liberal Whig, he often allowed his political beliefs to color his critical...
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Woolf is best known as one of the leaders of the Bloomsbury Group of artists and thinkers, and as the husband of novelist Virginia Woolf with whom he founded the Hogarth Press. A Fabian socialist duri...
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Cole wrote extensively on Cobbett's life and work and was the author of a Cobbett biography long considered definitive. In the following excerpt, he comments on Advice to Young Men.
[Advice to ...
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Regarded as one of England's premier men of letters during the first half of the twentieth century, Chesterton is best known today as a colorful bon vivant, a witty essayist, and as the creator...
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Blunden was associated with the Georgians, an early twentieth-century group of English poets who reacted against the prevalent contemporary mood of disillusionment and the rise of artistic modernism b...
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In the following excerpt, Brinton provides an overview of Cobbett's political thought, especially in regard to its effect on the Reform Bill of 1832.
To write about Cobbett as a political think...
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Orage was an English editor, reviewer, and essayist who edited the influential periodical New Age from 1907 to 1922. In 1932 he founded the New English Weekly, which he edited until his death two year...
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Pritchett, a modern British writer, is respected for his mastery of the short story and for what critics describe as his judicious, reliable, and insightful literary criticism. In the following excerp...
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Below, Pemberton summarizes Cobbett's accomplishment as a rough-hewn thinker and his significance to the future of English culture.
With the death of William Cobbett it was as if a blustering g...
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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'...
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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...
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An English poet and essayist, Hunt as literary critic encouraged and influenced several Romantic poets, especially John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Hunt was a cofounder of the weekly liberal newsp...
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In the following excerpt, Green discusses Cobbett's skill as a writer and the characteristics of his thought, touching on a wide range of Cobbett's writings.
Because Cobbett's mos...
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In the following essay, Sale discourses on Cobbett's significance and the nature of his philosophical outlook, referring recurrently to Rural Rides.
Cobbett wrote a shelf of books, including th...
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Below, Wilson summarizes the findings of his full-length comparison of Paine and Cobbett's political thought.
Tom Paine and William Cobbett, founding fathers of British popular Radicalism, deve...
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In the following chapter, Dyck discusses the background, intent, and critical reception of Cottage Economy.
In 1823 The Edinburgh Review imposed a sudden if temporary ceasefire in its fifteen-year bat...
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One of the most important commentators of the Romantic age, Hazlitt was an English critic and journalist. He is best known for his descriptive criticism in which he stressed that no motives beyond jud...
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In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1829, Cobbett expresses contempt for critics while stating the intent of his own writing.
As to merit, as an author or writer, I have alw...
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James Fitzjames Stephen was an English jurist and literary critic, best known for his Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873), a detailed, conservative counterblast to John Stuart Mill's On Libert...
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In the following excerpt, Egerton discusses Rural Rides, citing several lengthy quotations to illustrate Cobbett's handling of various concerns and emphases.
Were the well-meaning persons to ha...
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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 critic...
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Stephen is considered one of the most important English literary critics of the late Victorian and early Edwardian era. In his criticism, which was often moralistic, he argued that all literature is n...
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In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in the London Mercury in 1921, Freeman surveys Cobbett's career and his reputation among his contemporaries.
Born in 1762 at Farnham ...
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William Cobbett
William Cobbett
