William Benbow

[1] He worked with William Cobbett on the radical newspaper Political Register, and spent time in prison as a consequence of his writing, publishing and campaigning activities.

His protest petition to Parliament in 1818, presented along with a number of others, describes how he was apprehended in Dublin on 16 May 1817, spent eight months on remand in London, then was released without trial, lacking the resources to travel home to Manchester.

In addition to political texts, he also produced pirated editions of other works, and pornography – around 1818 he employed the young William Dugdale who went on to become one of London's most notorious publishers of obscene and pornographic material.

[5] When William Cobbett fled to America in 1817 to avoid arrest, his radical newspaper, the Political Register, continued to be published in London by Benbow until his return in 1820.

A heated exchange with the then Poet Laureate Robert Southey, who objected to Benbow's unauthorised reprinting of parts of his early poem Wat Tyler, prompted a response in the form of a pamphlet entitled A Scourge for the Laureate in which Benbow drew a pointed contrast between the radical sentiments of the early poem and Southey's later role within the establishment.

[2] Benbow printed his pirate edition of Southey's work under the imprint of his bookshop and publishing house, the Byron's Head, in Castle Street, Leicester Square.

In his pamphlet Benbow drew parallels between his plan and the ancient Jewish Jubilee year, which embraced concepts like forgiveness of debt and redistribution of land.