List of illustrations
x (1)
Acknowledgments xi (2)
List of abbreviations xiii
Introduction: locating a plebeian counterpublic sphere 1 (10)
1 A rhetoric of radical opposition
11 (54)
2 Radical print culture in periodical form
65 (49)
3 The trials of radicalism: assembling the evidence of reform
114 (44)
4 Reading Cobbett's contradictions
158 (37)
5 Leigh Hunt and the end of radical opposition
195 (32)
Afterword: William Hazlitt-a radical critique of radical opposition? 227 (7)
Notes 234 (35)
Index

Print Politics is the first literary study of the culture of the popular radical movement for parliamentary reform in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The period was characterized by popular agitation and repressive political measures including trials for seditious and blasphemous libel. Kevin Gilmartin explores the styles and strategies of radical opposition in the periodical press, and in the public culture of the time. He argues that writers and editors including William Cobbett, T.J. Wooler, Richard Carlile, John Wade, and Leigh Hunt committed themselves to a complex, flexible, and often contradictory project of independent political opposition