This lively, revealing book examines the history of the notorious writer who adopted the pseudonym "Junius" and contributed letters between 1769 and 1772 to the daily London Public Advisor viciously attacking King George III and the policies of his ministers. Junius has never been indisputably indentified: some sixty claimants have been put forward, but for no one of them has the authorship of the Letters been proved; and the pursuit of the historical Junius, for over two centuries, has continued to be an exciting game for first-rate minds, second-rate minds, and alas!, disordered minds.

For whatever reason, Junius has a compelling fascination, perhaps not unrelated to the "maignity of Junius", which the great Whig historian W.E.H. Lecky called "indeed truly fiendish; and uncurbed by any restraints of truth, or decency, or honour. In a few writers is a delight in the contemplation and infliction of pain more keen and more evident and he has a peculiar pleasure in directing his sarcasms to those circumstances or moments of private sorrow which is sacred to every honourable disputant. When the Princess Dowager was dying of cancer we find him gloating over her condition, and upon the loathsome remedy that was employed to alleviate her sufferings. He taunted the King with the imputed frailty of his mother and with the undutiful conduct of his child. He jested with the Duke of Grafton on the infidelity of his wife. In his correspondence with the Duke of Bedford he points with savage pleasure to the death of his only son, and because the Duke had shortly after that event voted on an important public question he falsely and basely charged him with the want of all natural affection."

Professor Francesco Cordasco, who has studied the Junius controversy for some forty years, has incorporated into Junius And His Works the unpublished Junius papers of Gustave Simonson (1864 - 1930?), an enigmatic figure, in his lifetime a physician, a classical philologist, a political theorist, and an amateur dramatist. Junius And His Works is a masterfully articulated study, the first narrative history of Junius, comprehensive in its coverage, and engrossing in its interesting explorations of the mystery of the historical Junius.