Samuel Warren, a staunch conservative, takes his place among British reform writers not because he raised the call for reform in the 1820s and 1830s but because he opposed it—most notably in his best-selling legal novel, Ten Thousand a-Year (1840-1841). But while the novel and other works by Warren attack large-scale political reforms such as Catholic emancipation, disestablishment of the Church of England, and what Warren called the "great BILL FOR GIVING EVERY BODY EVERY THING," they advocate reform of a different kind: the moral regeneration of corrupt and self-serving individuals in all classes of society, all branches of government, all trades and professions.

In sales and popularity Warren's works threatened for a while to surpass those of Charles Dickens. However, as Warren soon learned, "greatness" is relative, and fame may be as fleeting as it is hard-won. Today little is known about the early life of...