The Extraordinary Black Book: An Exposition of Abuses in Church and State, Courts of Law, Representation, Municipal and Corporate Bodies; With a Precis of The House of Commons, Past, Present, and To Come

London: Effingham Wilson, 1832. A New Edition, Greatly Enlarged and Corrected. Octavo. 23cm. Bound in later rather institutional black buckram with paper title label. 16pp. ads to front matter; [xxxii]; 683pp. +1pp ads to rear. Minor wear and bumping to extremities with a little rippling of the cloth to the front board, strong and tight; internally clean, later endpapers, ink ownerships to front flyleaf, frontispiece portrait "Friends of Reform - Foes of Revolution" quite heavily spotted with some offsetting to the title page, edges untrimmed, some occasional light spotting within. A very good copy in a later binding of a rather unwieldy work.

A later printing of Wade's incendiary 1820 catalog of abuses performed by the Church, The King, the Government and various business interests, against the people, security and progress of Great Britain. A continued bestseller, demonstrating a fervent appetite on the part of the British public to read Wade's excoriating denunciation of the upper classes and their merely wealthy counterparts. On a number of fronts this public airing of secretly dirty laundry met with some political and social success, and led to some very public gestures at reform. (Inventory #: 84913)