Product Description

Travelling on horseback through southern England in the early 19th century, William Cobbett provides evocative and accurate descriptions of the countryside, colourful accounts of his encounters with labourers, and indignant outbursts at the encroaching cities and the sufferings of the exploited poor. Ian Dyck's new edition places these lively accounts of rural life in the context of Cobbett's political and social beliefs and reveals the volume as his platform for rural radical reform.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153584 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

About the Author
William Cobbett (1763-1835) spent his youth as a farm worker and gardener. He lived in revolutionary France and Philadelphia where, as 'Peter Porcupine', he rose to fame as a pro-British and anti-Jacobin journalist. Later, back in England, he became a Radical and promoted the cause of reform in politics and agriculture. Ian Dyck is Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. He is the author of 'William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture' (CUP, 1992).

Customer Reviews

Cobbett Country
This is a wonderful book, written by a man whose passions are plain for all to see. His obvious love for the English countryside and the people who work it are equalled only by his bitter contempt for those who rule. The descriptions of the places he visits are beautifully observed and have you fumbling for your roadmap with an itching desire to go and see them for yourself. He views the land he passes through farmers eyes, and the work is somehow elevated by this injection of knowledge and experience. People with radical tendencies will sympathise with much of the political comment that he makes and wonder if he would think much has changed in the almost two hundred years that has elapsed since he wrote this book. I would like to have seen more editorial explanations of many of the terms and expressions he uses which are now out of use.

Revolution by a Revolutionary
We think that recent decades have seen the greatest possible changes that mankind could possibly go through. We're wrong.

William Cobbett lived through an era that was breathtaking in the change that it experienced. The agrarian economy that had sustained the country for centuries was being pushed aside by the industrial revolution, indeed, agriculture was about to experience deep decline. In politics, the loss of the American colonies - the first step in the end of the Empire - still haunted the country. The age of patrician rule was about to yield - if no more than that - with the Reform Act of 1832.

Cobbett exemplifies the contradictions of this age - passionately opposed to 'modern' economics, yet deriding of the 'old ways', patrician yet a powerful advocate of the enhanced franchise.

Cobbett gives us a record of an important turning point in our country's history and sheds light upon the causes and impacts of this period of change. He offers us lessons that may be of equal relevance in our own period of immense change.

Apart from that, Cobbett paints us a picture of a landscape that is, on the one hand, so very familiar to us, but on the other, totally alien.

However, the editorial contribution of this version of his work is poor. That anyone in the early 21st century should understand the intricacies of early 19th century politics is asking too much, and the vital explanation and understanding that the average paperback reader needs is entirely missing.

VERY political writing
This book got a bit too political for my tastes. It's worth reading from an academic point of view, but I don't think it's the sort of book that you take with you on your holiday to the seaside. If you're familiar with some of the places Cobbett mentions in his travels, it can be interesting to compare them as they are now to the way he describes them. Otherwise, it's probably not a very 'fun' read.