Thomas Wooler is something of an enigma. Hardly anything is known of his life outside the years 1815-1827, while his contribution to the reform movement and radical publishing during that period has generally been obscured by more illustrious or controversial contemporaries such as William Cobbett, Henry Hunt, Richard Carlile, and Thomas Spence. His reputation rests almost entirely on his spirited weekly the Black Dwarf (1817-1824). With a circulation at its height of some twelve thousand copies, the periodical was a consistent focal point for both metropolitan and provincial radicalism during the tumultuous postwar years. Most of it was written by Wooler in a deeply ironic and often melodramatic style--somewhat heavy-handed for modern taste, but it won him both a mass readership and the critical acclaim of his peers.

Thomas Jonathan Wooler was born in Yorkshire in 1785 or 1786. His early life is obscure, but he was apprenticed to the...