Beschreibung:

Citizen Lee.- [Lee (Richard, publisher and radical, known as Citizen Lee, c. 1774-98?)] Account of the Proceedings of a Meeting of the People... on the Subject of the Threatened Invasion of their Rights by a Convention Bill, 16pp. pamphlet, slightly browned, stitched as issued, edges a little chipped, [ESTC lists 3 copies in the UK and 7 copies in the USA], 8vo, Printed for Citizen Lee, at the Tree of Liberty, 1795. ⁂ "Richard Lee... emerged from obscurity to play an intriguing and important role in London radicalism during the mid-1790s. Nothing is known of his background, but he appears to have grown up in poverty, and by 1794, aged about twenty, he lived in Orange Street, Leicester Fields. At that time he worked as a clerk in a merchant's office and became a frequent visitor to Eaton's bookshop. In this radical milieu Lee acquired an interest in political writing and poetry, and during the course of his career he published no fewer than fifty titles under his own imprint. Under the sign of the Tree of Liberty he moved premises frequently during 1795, trading at various times from his mother's shop in St Ann's Court, Soho, 47 Haymarket, 98 Berwick Street, Soho, and then 444 Strand. Lee's connection with the LCS [London Corresponding Society] proved brief and unstable. As a Methodist he disapproved of the society's growing tendencies to support deism and atheism in the mid-1790s and he was reputedly expelled for refusing to sell Paine's Age of Reason and Volney's Ruins. Despite distancing himself from the LCS, Lee was arrested in November 1795 for publishing the regicidal handbill King Killing (1795), Edward Iliff's A summary of the duties of citizenship. Written expressly for the members of the London Corresponding Society (1795), as well as two extracts from the radical pamphleteer Charles Pigott. On 19 December 1795 he escaped custody and within days was bound for Hamburg, ironically eloping with the wife of James Powell, one of the most diligent government spies to join the LCS. Within six months Lee had moved to Philadelphia, where he peddled copies of his publications and published the American Magazine until 1797. According to William Cobbett, Lee was in gaol during 1798, but nothing further is known of his career; it seems likely that he died, possibly from yellow fever, soon after his release from prison." - Oxford DNB.