Great Cobbett: the noblest agitator

This trenchant biography provides an illuminating portrait of one of the most attractive and puzzling figures of English letters. A founding father of British radicalism, Cobbett was also a soldier, grammarian, politician, and a dedicated agrarian reformer. Green suggests that central to Cobbett's enigmatic personality was this very arcadiarism: a longing to rescue England from the ravages of social and industrial change.