An allegory for our times…A generation ago, Hunt's dystopia would have struck the reader as a reminder of the bad old days we had left well behind. At the beginning of this new century and millennium, with Prime Minister Tony Blair abolishing such time-honored legal safeguards as one's right to protection against double jeopardy and with a perceived climate of increasing inequality and repression in the United States—to say nothing of a blind worship of celebrity, money and success at any price—The Rebellion of the Beasts seems disturbingly timely.

—Merle Rubin, Los Angles Times Book Review

Originally published anonymously in London in 1825, Rebellion is a hilarious and scathing piece of anti-Royalist satire…It is unclear whether Orwell was aware of the existence of this book, but the two works share much of the same dark, bleak humor.

—Library Journal, Felicity D. Walsh,
Southern Polytechnic State Univ., Marietta, GA

Outraged by their brutal mistreatment at the hands of humankind, the animals rebel all across the land and establish their own government. George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945)? Yes, but also The Rebellion of the Beasts, a blisteringly satirical and devilishly witty assault on the monarchy published anonymously in London in 1825…Hunt's sagacious, slyly funny, and courageous indictment of those who abuse power is as relevant now as then and bound to elicit much curiosity and discussion.

—Booklist, Donna Seaman,
American Library Association

The Rebellion of the Beasts reclaims an essential voice in the long satiric conversation from Aristophanes to Orwell and, among the Romantic writers, Blake, Shelley, Keats and Peacock. Clever, savage, funny and poignant, this attack on political arrogance, religious hypocrisy, and intellectual excess is as applicable today as it was in 1825.

—Marilyn Gaull, New York University

Thanks are due to Douglas A. Anderson and Wicker Park Press for providing us with a modern edition of (this book). Long ascribed to Leigh Hunt, this lively satire on revolution, reform, and reaction offers us a welcome glimpse into the political views of the Hunt circle in the mid-1820s, a time too little studied.

—Jeffrey N. Cox, University of Colorado, Boulder

Leigh Hunt was a social critic who anticipated Orwell's Animal Farm by 120 years…Hunt's target was European royalty, which at any time draws a cynical eye, while Orwell's was Soviet Communism, and the animal fable has a very long history (which we can glimpse in Mother Goose, Grimm, and even Disney).

—Tom Easton, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact

The writing is lively and funny in a way that still appeals today. Amusing touches fill the story…Weary readers of formula fantasy will enjoy the first chapter, a marvelous satire of over-complex magic spells…a light and witty narrative.

—David Bratman, Mythprint: Monthly Bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society

In my tenure as editor of Midwest Book Review I've never come upon any literary work as delightfully sardonically vitriolic as The Rebellion of the Beasts. What is fascinating about this book is that it exists because of literary collaboration which stretches across 180 years of history from the English Prince Regency to the present. The work is a result of the efforts of World-Class J.R.R. Tolkien Literary scholar Douglas A. Anderson. Anderson has made it his business to resurrect deserving dead authors who have slipped from the public eye, because he believes they deserve to be read and they produce works of lasting value. In this case Douglas did one hell of a good job … I hope it does not appear that I am beating a dead horse as I continue to praise this book, but it does have a certain lyrical vividness in the small details of its narrative which give the work a medieval vibrance of the sort that one sees in the work of Umberto Eco, and at the same time modern cinematic quality … This handsomely produced volume belongs on my readers shelves and deserves a place on the shelves of school, public, college and research libraries and offers something to a very wide range readers from the bright young adult to the postgraduate researcher.

—Midwest Book Review, Philip E. Kaveny, Kaveny's Bookshelf

Savage, funny, and unsettling…this new edition of The Rebellion of the Beasts makes available a fascinating and hitherto rare text that now seems less dated than Animal Farm. The Rebellion has a fresh, contemporary feel, and it will be of interest to students of Romantic politics, satire, animal rights and vegetarianism. And if you want to know what it feels like to be boiled and skinned alive, turn to pp. 24-25. I read it once, and couldn't bear to do so again.

—Wordsworth Circle, Nicholas Roe, University of St. Andrews