William Cobbett, born in Surrey in 1762, was the most prolific muck-raking journalist of his age and the publisher ofThe Political Register, the main newspaper of the working class in early-nineteenth-century England. He died in 1835. Michael Pollanis the author of theNew York TimesbestsellerThe Botany of Desire(available from Random House Trade Paperbacks) andSecond Nature, named one of the best gardening books of the twentieth century by the American Horticultural Society. He is a contributing editor toHarper’s magazine and a contributing writer atThe New York Times Magazine.
