John Thelwall was born on 27 July 1764 in London, England. After pursuing a variety of trades and occupations, he settled upon literary pursuits. In the 1780s his work appeared in various journals and then in 1787 he published in two volumes Poems on Various Subjects (London). By speaking at public debating societies, Thelwall began his career as a political lecturer. Inspired by the events of the French revolution, he became more involved in politics and became acquainted with such veteran reformers as John Horne Tooke. He soon became involved with the London Corresponding Society, a working-class reform movement founded in January 1792 by the Scottish shoemaker, Thomas Hardy (1752-1832). Thelwall became the most prominent and articulate member of the group, and when the Pitt government attempted to suppress the growing movement, he was arrested along with Hardy and Tooke. Acquitted in December of 1793, Thelwall returned to his literary pursuits, publishing a compendium of prose and verse entitledThe Peripatetic (London: 1793). He also continued lecturing and writing such political pamphlets as: The Natural and Constitutional Rights of Britons (1795). During this time John Thelwall made the acquaintance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the renowned Romantic poet, who also lectured on political subjects. In the summer of 1797 Thelwall took a walking tour through the west country of England and spent ten days at Nether Stowey with Coleridge as well as with William and Dorothy Wordsworth. While continuing to write and publish poetry, Thelwall also became interested in speech therapy and elocution and established an institute in Lincoln's Inn Fields. With the end of the Napoleonic wars (1815), the call for parliamentary reform revived, and Thelwall answered the call. He purchased and edited the journal, The Champion, in which he published articles advocating reform and universal suffrage. Thelwall died on 17 February 1834.