ABSTRACT
First published anonymously as a pamphlet in mid-April 1818; the name of the printer, Airey and Bellingham, Kendal, appears on the title page and at the end of the work. Printed octavo from a single sheet, it is coverless and runs to sixteen pages; there is no known manuscript and no full republication took place in De Quincey's lifetime. The immediate context of production of the pamphlet is the 1818 parliamentary election campaign in Westmorland, and more specifically still the challenge to the local Lowther ascendancy by a supposed outsider, Henry Brougham, who stood as an Independent Whig candidate, The county's two seats had not been contested since 1774 and by the time of the general election of 1818 seemed to be firmly at the disposal of Sir William Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale, and his family, the most powerful Tory landowners in the region.
