Although few large bodies of primary material related to the American Revolution remains unused, the English political pamphlets which formed a vital part of the pre-Revolutionary debate and were reprinted and circulated freely on both sides of the Atlantic have continued to be ignored. The political literature which accompanied the coming of the Revolution has not been studied as the product of a genuinely Anglo-American debate.
The present volume deals with but a single class of English pamphlets - those written in defense of America after the North Ministry turned to coercion. This material has been rarely noted even by specialists and remains largely unknown to most students of the period. The omission is all the more notable because abundant evidence survives to testify to the influence which these works had.
