LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PETER PORCUPINE WITH OTHER RECORDS OF HIS EARLY CAREER IN ENGLAND & AMERICA

[London]: Nonesuch Press, 1927. No. 1,582 of 1,800 copies. 233 x 145 mm. (9 1/4 x 5 3/4"). [vi], 163, [1] pp.
Publisher's cloth-backed marbled paper boards, title stamped in gilt at head of spine. Frontispiece of Peter Porcupine after a caricature by Gillray, colored through stencils at the Curwen Press. Pastedown with armorial bookplate of Sir John Wormald. Dreyfus 41. ◆Edges a little rubbed, one corner slightly bumped, endpapers with offsetting from binder's glue, two leaves with very small punctures to the margins, otherwise an excellent copy, clean and bright throughout.

This is a selection of writings by pro-democracy English-American pamphleteer and journalist William Cobbett (1763-1835), who wrote under the nom de plume "Peter Porcupine." As noted in the prospectus, "though passages from the works now presented have been used by his biographers, there has been hitherto no attempt such as this to let Cobbett speak, and speak at length, for himself. . . . The genetic history of his opinions has its own importance and interest; but the general reader will probably take more pleasure in the lively picture of himself which is presented incidentally by this most personal and self-revealing of controversialists." The introduction provided here by G. D. H. Cole is his first association with Nonesuch in a professional context, though he had been made familiar to Francis Meynell through academic and society ties..