John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty - Hardcover

Cash, Arthur

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300108710 ISBN 13: 9780300108712

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2006

Synopsis

One of the most colorful figures in English political history, John Wilkes (1726 97) is remembered as the father of the British free press, defender of civil and political liberties, and hero to American colonists, who attended closely to his outspoken endorsements of liberty. Wilkes’s political career was rancorous, involving duels, imprisonments in the Tower of London, and the Massacre of St. George’s Fields in which seven of his supporters were shot to death by government troops. He was equally famous for his private” life a confessed libertine, a member of the notorious Hellfire Club, and the author of what has been called the dirtiest poem in the English language.

This lively biography draws a full portrait of John Wilkes from his childhood days through his heyday as a journalist and agitator, his defiance of government prosecutions for libel and obscenity, his fight against exclusion from Parliament, and his service as lord mayor of London on the eve of the American Revolution. Told here with the force and immediacy of a firsthand newspaper account, Wilkes’s own remarkable story is inseparable from the larger story of modern civil liberties and how they came to fruition.

About this title

About the Author

Arthur H. Cash is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of English, State University of New York at New Paltz, and biographer of Laurence Sterne.

Review

"Arthur Cash treats the career of John Wilkes as a central episode in the rise of modern liberty. The story is told with authority and vivid feeling: it has the force and immediacy of good journalism and a wealth of historical detail hardly available to Wilkes or his contemporaries. This book rescues Wilkes from legend back to life."—David Bromwich, Yale University



 

(David Bromwich)

"It is difficult to believe that John Wilkes, a notorious womanizer and scandal-monger, was a genuine hero of civil liberties and political democracy on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 18th century, but hero he was and in this engaging book Arthur Cash gives Wilkes the serious treatment he has long deserved."—Eric Foner, Columbia University

(Eric Foner)

“Arthur Cash’s biography of Wilkes combines outstanding scholarship—the product of years of archival research—with a compelling, nuanced and beautifully told narrative of the life of one of the eighteenth century’s most compelling characters.”—John Brewer, author of The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century
(John Brewer)

"Arthur Cash's carefully detailed new biography of Wilkes examines the life and career of a founding father of civil liberty both seriously and sympathetically, considering Wilkes within the broad cultural context of the volatile decades in which he was most active."—Stephen C. Behrendt, Eighteenth-Century Life (Stephen C. Behrendt Eighteenth-Century Life)

"John Wilkes was one of the most influential and charismatic political activists in British history. He has attrached many biographers, none better informed on his private and public life than this author. . . . Cash is excellent on Wilkes's private life and public career."—H.T. Dickinson, The Historian (H.T. Dickinson The Historian)

"An enjoyable biography of the libertine, civil libertarian, and popular symbol of protest. Cash's treatment seeks to remind those who might have forgotten that Wilkes was the eighteenth century's principal champion of free speech and a free press."--Andrew Shankman, Journal of the Early Republic (Andrew Shankman Journal of the Early Republic)

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0300108710
• ISBN 13: 9780300108712
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496