Mired in poverty and injustice, late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England was as ripe for revolutionary change as its continental neighbour, with many of its leading intellectuals keen to stoke the fires. Yet the Reign of Terror and later Napoleonic wars that engulfed post-Revolutionary France, held serious implications for the development of British radical thought.

Former revolutionary advocates such as Wordsworth and Coleridge quickly came to recognise the bloody shortcomings of violent upheaval, and in the early years of the nineteenth century, began to lay the foundations for a tradition of dissent aimed at seeking profound changes in justice through alternative means.

Drawing on the lives and works of a unique collection of scholars, philosophers and literary figures - among them William Blake, the Shelleys, Robert Owen, George Eliot, John Ruskin, Annie Bessant - The Offbeat Radicals reveals how the highly unorthodox ideas developed by these heirs of British radical thought, sowed the seeds for future reform. An absorbing and stimulating read, Geoffrey Ashe's latest work proves an authoritative exploration of this intriguing and uniquely British strain of political thought.