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 reform in the quarter century before the Reform Act of 1832; his lifelong campaign for social justice made him worthy of the self-awarded title "The Poor Man's Friend"; as a defender of the freedom of the press he became, in William Hazlitt's phrase, "a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country" (The Spirit of the Age, 1825).

Nearly the only source of information on Cobbett's early life is Cobbett himself. In The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796) and in many short passages of autobiography scattered through his later writings, he selected significant reminiscences to indicate stages in his growth and to point the contrast between a golden past and...