William Cobbett (1763-1835) was a prolific writer, best known as the anti-Radical founder of Cobbett's "Political Register" which ran from 1802-35. This collection of his writings presents the texts fully reset and annotated with biographical and analytical introductions. Volume 5: A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland 1824—1826.

The Oxford Handbook of British Romantic Prose is a full-length essay collection devoted entirely to British Romantic nonfiction prose. Organized into eight parts, each containing between five and nine chapters arranged alphabetically, the Handbook weaves together familiar and unfamiliar texts, events, and authors, and invites readers to draw comparisons, reimagine connections and disconnections, and confront frequently stark contradictions, within British Romantic nonfiction prose, but also in its relationship to British Romanticism more generally, and to the literary practices and cultural contexts of other periods and countries. The Handbook builds on previous scholarship in the field, considers emerging trends and evolving methodologies, and suggests future areas of study. Throughout the emphasis is on lucid expression rather than gnomic declaration, and on chapters that offer, not a dutiful survey, but evaluative assessments that keep an eye on the bigger picture yet also dwell meaningfully on specific paradoxes and the most telling examples. Taken as a whole the volume demonstrates the energy, originality, and diversity at the crux of British Romantic nonfiction prose. It vigorously challenges the traditional construction of the British Romantic movement as focused too exclusively on the accomplishments of its poets, and it reveals the many ways in which scholars of the period are steadily broadening out and opening up delineations of British Romanticism in order to encompass and thoroughly evaluate the achievements of its nonfiction prose writers.

This edition shows us the incredible life and work of William Cobbett (1763-1835), an English author, independent journalist and Member of Parliament. As an intrinsically conservative journalist, he was frustrated by the shady British political establishment of the times and gave strong support to agrarians. He, with a popular agrarian faction, argued that reforming Parliament, including abolishing "rotten boroughs", unnecessary foreign activity and suppression of wages would promote internal peace and ease the poverty of farm labourers and smallholders. He relentlessly sought an end to borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" (overpaid and sometimes corrupt bureaucrats, public servants and stockbrokers), also dismissing British Jews in a typecast by the same token. Early in life he was a soldier and loyal devotee of King and country, but he later pushed for Radicalism, which helped bring about the Reform Act 1832 and his election that year as one of two MPs for the newly enfranchised borough of Oldham. His much-interwoven polemics cover subjects from political reform to religion. He argued that economic improvement could support growth in global population, as an anti-Malthusian. His writing coined the metaphor "a red herring".

This edition shows us the incredible life and work of William Cobbett (1763-1835), an English author, independent journalist and Member of Parliament. As an intrinsically conservative journalist, he was frustrated by the shady British political establishment of the times and gave strong support to agrarians. He, with a popular agrarian faction, argued that reforming Parliament, including abolishing "rotten boroughs", unnecessary foreign activity and suppression of wages would promote internal peace and ease the poverty of farm labourers and smallholders. He relentlessly sought an end to borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" (overpaid and sometimes corrupt bureaucrats, public servants and stockbrokers), also dismissing British Jews in a typecast by the same token. Early in life he was a soldier and loyal devotee of King and country, but he later pushed for Radicalism, which helped bring about the Reform Act 1832 and his election that year as one of two MPs for the newly enfranchised borough of Oldham. His much-interwoven polemics cover subjects from political reform to religion. He argued that economic improvement could support growth in global population, as an anti-Malthusian. His writing coined the metaphor "a red herring".

Politician, journalist, reformer, convict, social commentator and all-round thorn in the side of the establishment, William Cobbett cut a swathe through late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century British society with his copious and acerbic writings on any and every issue that caught his attention. Both a radical and a conservative, and with strong opinions on any given subject, Cobbett had a talent for controversial and pugnacious writing that echoes down the centuries and still rings fresh today. Commemorating the 250th anniversary of Cobbett’s birth in 1763, this book provides a selection of his writings - both published and unpublished - that highlight his talents, obsessions, and concerns. From corruption and Parliamentary reform, poverty and commerce, to patriotism and religion, the selections display Cobbett at his best - sometimes outraged and excoriating, sometimes sympathetic and reasoned - but always honest and witty. Divided into 14 chapters each dealing with a particular theme, the selections are contextualised so as to provide the necessary historical background for any readers who may be unfamiliar with the period. In so doing, the book not only brings to life the dynamic and rumbustious world of Georgian England within which Cobbett moved, but also reveals many uncanny parallels with modern concerns. Whether espousing political reform, promoting rural affairs or decrying a spiralling national debt, many of Cobbett’s opinions seem as relevant today as when they were first written. Certainly modern readers will find much here to educate, amuse and admire.

'A brilliant and revelatory book about the history of ideas' David Runciman 'Fascinating and important' Ruth Scurr The Enlightenment is popularly seen as the Age of Reason, a key moment in human history when ideals such as freedom, progress, natural rights and constitutional government prevailed. In this radical re-evaluation, historian Richard Whatmore shows why, for many at its centre, the Enlightenment was a profound failure. By the early eighteenth century, hope was widespread that Enlightenment could be coupled with toleration, the progress of commerce and the end of the fanatic wars of religion that were destroying Europe. At its heart was the battle to establish and maintain liberty in free states – and the hope that absolute monarchies such as France and free states like Britain might even subsist together, equally respectful of civil liberties. Yet all of this collapsed when states pursued wealth and empire by means of war. Xenophobia was rife and liberty itself turned fanatic. The End of Enlightenment traces the changing perspectives of economists, philosophers, politicians and polemicists around the world, including figures as diverse as David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft. They had strived to replace superstition with reason, but witnessed instead terror and revolution, corruption, gross commercial excess and the continued growth of violent colonialism. Returning us to these tumultuous events and ideas, and digging deep into the thought of the men and women who defined their age, Whatmore offers a lucid exploration of disillusion and intellectual transformation, a brilliant meditation on our continued assumptions about the past, and a glimpse of the different ways our world might be structured - especially as the problems addressed at the end of Enlightenment are still with us today.