ABSTRACT
Both sides in any political struggle attempt to lay claim to their nation’s popular patriotic symbols; thus both the Tories and the radical reformers claimed to represent the real spirit of John Bull, symbol of the honest, hardheaded Englishman. JOHN BULL’S BRITISH JOURNAL was a weekly newspaper that appeared in just three numbers on February 25, March 4, and March 11, 1821. Its publisher and presumed editor was William Benbow, an unsavory radical printer-publisher who in 1821 also issued a pirated edition of Shelley’s Queen Mab under a false New York imprint. Though John Bull’s British Journal contains mentions of a few other literary works, including Byron’s Parisina, the only notice substantial enough to deserve a place in these volumes is the following piece on Queen Mab.
