CROWDER

1p., 12mo. On aged and worn grey paper, with a corner torn away, affecting a couple of lines of text. Franked on reverse: 'Ashford July eleven 1829 | The Right Honble | The Lord Mayor | &c &c &c | Mansion House | London | E Knatchbull'. Knatchbull's small seal, depicting a dog, is present entire in black wax. He writes that he would have had 'much pleasure' in meeting him at Rochester, but that his 'House will be full of Company on the 24th'.

Leno (1824-94) was a printer, publisher, poet and editor, and a significant figure in nineteenth-century radicalism. In 1845, while a printer, he led a group of radical workers who started a Young Men's Improvement Society and circulated a manuscript newspaper entitled the 'Attempt'. He then became branch secretary of the local Chartists. In 1849 the 'Attempt' became a printed journal, the 'Uxbridge Pioneer'. In 1861 he was editor of the 'Poetic Magazine' and in 1881 of the 'Anti-tithe Journal'.