ABSTRACT
175John Thelwall was editor of the Champion from 1818 to 1823. During these years, he contributed a lead editorial for each edition that, almost without exception, dealt with political subjects. Due to the inevitable constraints of space, we have only included two brief samples of the journalistic material from the Champion. We have included a slightly wider variety of the more literary material he republished in The Poetical Recreations of the Champion (1822). We have elected to do so in part because Thelwall often emphasized his desire to devote more time to poetry, ‘the first passion of his soul’. He also articulated his desire that the Champion be recognized ‘as much a Literary as a Political miscellany’.1 We also include the poetry here to show how much politics underpinned his literary endeavours (however much he might deny it in these years).
