Among the political figures of nineteenth-century England, none was more controversial, witty, volatile, or prolific than Henry Brougham, the lawyer-politician whose name for many epitomized reform. His compatriots, writes biographer Frances Hawes, both feared and admired him. Hot-tempered and humanitarian, he possessed a love of justice so strong that, despite repeated defeat, he prevailed in the cause of reform, leaving his mark equally on the parliamentary, educational, and legal systems of his time.

Henry Peter Brougham was born in Edinburgh on 19 September 1778, the son of relatively "undistinguished" parents (as his early biographers were wont to note). According to Hawes, Brougham's father, Henry Brougham, spent his life "blamelessly and uselessly, pottering about Edinburgh, engaged in vague literary pursuits, honest and affectionate but dilatory, shambling and negative." His mother, Eleanor Syme, exerted a more positive influence, working along with her uncle William Robertson, a noted historian and the head of...