This section contains 1,460 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: "Advice to Young Men," in The Life of William Cobbett, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1924, pp. 306-18.
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 Young Men] was not intended mainly for a working-class public. The advice was addressed "to young men and (incidentally) to young women in the middle and higher ranks of life." It took the form, a favourite form with Cobbett, of letters to "a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen or a Subject." Its purpose was not primarily political, though it contains many political allusions. It is, in fact, a series of straight talks on the various concerns of life, simply and directly written, and plentifully illustrated with incidents from Cobbett's own life. It is egotistic...
This section contains 1,460 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |