Volume 29, Number 10 · June 10, 1982
The Voice of the People
By Ronald Blythe
William Cobbet: The Poor Man's Friend
by George Spater
Cambridge University Press, 2 volumes, 653 pp., $49.50
William Cobbett was born the son of a farm laborer in 1763 and became England's greatest radical journalist before he died in 1835. George Spater writes of his genius for exposition, and it is more truth than compliment to add that Spater's own gift for setting out in clear prose the political and social events of a complex era makes his book a key one for any full understanding of Cobbett and his times. Spater had an added advantage in being able to view his subject through American eyes, for Cobbett, who is popularly considered as English as roast beef, was subtly influenced by the years he spent in America during the 1780s and 1790s, and later in the 1810s, and has needed a good American biographer. It is also fortunate that Spater is free of the complexes about class that would tend to tangle a British account of Cobbett.
Review, 2573 words
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