William Hone's importance as a British reform writer rests not so much upon the specific political arguments he produced and forwarded as on the tumultuous political milieu of late-Regency England, which loaned its urgency to the act of writing and publishing. Hone's most influential and widely read works were pamphlet-length parodies--topical political squibs with little claim to survival beyond the immediate historical conditions that had engendered them. But this situation should not belittle Hone's efforts. Indeed, the government found the extraordinary circulation of his 1817 liturgical parodies to be alarming enough to elicit a repressive response in the form of a "circular letter" from Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth, and Hone's blasphemy trials for these parodies are still recognized as landmark cases in the establishment of a British free press. Two years later, Hone's pamphlets on Peterloo (1819) and on the Queen Caroline divorce proceedings (1820) were among the most popular works...