Richard Cobden, Independent Radical

In this biography Edsall demonstrates how Cobden dominated middle-class radicalism from the turbulent 1840s to the quieter years before the emergence of the Gladstonian Liberal party in the 1860s. Cobden was significant as a spokesman for the middle class in an era of acute class conflict and as a critic of the aims of great-power diplomacy at a time when his own country was the greatest of powers.