ABSTRACT
Cobbett was a phenomenon, one of the most influential and singular English writers of the past three centuries. His many roles as a journalist, political agitator and commentator on the state of the country, during a period of transformative change, have earned him a place which remains unique both in the range and volume of his writings and the great variety of his admirers. In part, the great appeal of Cobbett's writing rests upon the range of topics upon which he expressed his opinions and the forcefulness with which he delivered them. Cobbett was a long-standing and unashamed 'patriot', a self-proclaimed 'calf of John Bull', who as 'Peter Porcupine' had set himself up as the scourge of the French revolutionaries and those he saw as their British fellow-travellers. Cobbett was a child of revolutionary times and has some claim to be considered 'a child of the Enlightenment'; a member of what Peter Gay called 'the party of humanity'.
