Literary Research And The British Eighteenth Century

The 18th century in Britain was a transition period for literature. Patronage, either by a benefactor or through subscription, lingered even as the publishing and bookselling industries developed. The practice of reviewing books became well established during the second half of the century, with the first periodical founded in 1749. For the literary scholar, these gradual changes mean that different search strategies are required to conduct research into primary and secondary source material across the era. Literary Research and the British Eighteenth Century addresses these unique challenges. It examines how the following all contribute to the richness of literary research for this era: book and periodical publishing; a growing literate society; dissemination of literature through salons, private societies, and coffee houses; the growing importance of book reviews; the explosion of publishing; and the burgeoning of primary source material available through new publishing and digital initiatives in the 21st century. This volume explores primary and secondary resources, including general literary research guides; union library catalogs; print and online bibliographies; scholarly journals; manuscripts and archives; 18th-century books, newspapers, and periodicals; contemporary reception; and electronic texts and journals, as well as Web resources. Each chapter addresses the research methods and tools best used to extract relevant information and compares and evaluates sources, making this book an invaluable guide to any literary scholar and student of the British eighteenth century.

'This book convincingly challenges both the extremely short historical memory of most postcolonial work and the all-too-insularly English world still conjured by period specialists. Hogarthian whores and Grub Street hacks, coffee houses and fashionable pastimes, and the burgeoning of print culture all stand revealed as intimately bound to portents of plantation insurgency, agitation for abolition, and the vast fortunes produced by the labouring bodies of the poor, the colonized, and the enslaved. Eighteenth-century studies has never appeared in a more engaged and fascinating light.'Professor Donna Landry, University of KentIn this volume Suvir Kaul addresses the relations between literary culture, English commercial and colonial expansion, and the making of 'Great Britain' in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He argues that literary writing played a crucial role in generating the vocabulary of British nationalism, both in inter-national terms and in attempts to realign political and cultural relations between England, Scotland, and Ireland. The formal innovations and practices characteristic of eighteenth-century English literature were often responses to the worlds brought into view by travel writers, merchants, and colonists. Writers (even those suspicious of mercantile and colonial expansion) worked with a growing sense of a 'national literature' whose achievements would provide the cultural capital adequate to global imperial power, and would distinguish Great Britain for its twin success in 'arms and arts'. The book ranges from Davenant's theatre to Smollet's Roderick Random to Phillis Wheatley's poetry to trace the impact of empire on literary creativity.Key Features*An introduction to the impact of mercantilism and empire on the crafting of eighteenth-century British literature*Encourages students to examine the key formal innovations that define eighteenth-century British literary history as they were produced by writers who redefined

A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature is a lively exploration of one of the most diverse and innovative periods in literary history. Capturing the richness and excitement of the era, this book provides extensive coverage of major authors, poets, dramatists, and journalists of the period, such as Dryden, Pope and Swift, while also exploring the works of important writers who have received less attention by modern scholars, such as Matthew Prior and Charles Churchill. Uniquely, the book also discusses noncanonical, working-class writers and demotic works of the era. During the eighteenth-century, Britain experienced vast social, political, economic, and existential changes, greatly influencing the literary world. The major forms of verse, poetry, fiction and non-fiction, experimental works, drama, and political prose from writers such as Montagu, Finch, Johnson, Goldsmith and Cowper, are discussed here in relation to their historical context. A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature is essential reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of English literature. Topics covered include: Verse in the early 18th century, from Pope, Gay, and Swift to Addison, Defoe, Montagu, and Finch Poetry from the mid- to late-century, highlighting the works of Johnson, Gray, Collins, Smart, Goldsmith, and Cowper among others, as well as women and working-class poets Prose Fiction in the early and 18th century, including Behn, Haywood, Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett The novel past mid-century, including experimental works by Johnson, Sterne, Mackenzie, Walpole, Goldsmith, and Burney Non-fiction prose, including political and polemical prose 18th century drama

Comparisons not only prove fundamental in the epistemological foundation of modernity (Foucault, Luhmann), but they fulfil a central function in social life and the production of art. Taking a cue from the Practice Turn in sociology, the contributors are investigating the role of comparative practices in the formation of eighteenth-century literature and culture. The book conceives of social practices of comparing as being entrenched in networks of circulation of bodies, artefacts, discourses, and ideas, and aims to investigate how such practices ordered and changed British literature and culture during the long eighteenth century.

This engaging book introduces new readers of eighteenth-century texts to some of the major works, authors, and debates of a key period of literary history. Rather than simply providing a chronological survey of the era, this book analyzes the impact of significant cultural developments on literary themes and forms - including urbanization, colonial, and mercantile expansion, the emergence of the "public sphere," and changes in sex and gender roles. In eighteenth-century Britain, many of the things we take for granted about modern life were shockingly new: women appeared for the first time on stage; the novel began to dominate the literary marketplace; people entertained the possibility that all human beings were created equal, and tentatively proposed that reason could triumph over superstition; ministers became more powerful than kings, and the consumer emerged as a political force. Eighteenth-Century English Literature: 1660-1789 explores these issues in relation to well-known works by such authors as Defoe, Swift, Pope, Richardson, Gray, and Sterne, while also bringing attention to less familiar figures, such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Leapor, and Olaudah Equiano. It offers both an ideal introduction for students and a fresh approach for those with research interests in the period.

Literature and Culture Handbooks are an innovative series of guides to major periods, topics and authors in British and American literature and culture. Designed to provide a comprehensive, one-stop resource for literature students, each handbook provides the essential information and guidance needed from the beginning of a course through to developing more advanced knowledge and skills. Written in clear language by leading academics, they provide an indispensable introduction to key topics, including: • Introduction to authors, texts, historical and cultural contexts • Guides to key critics, concepts and topics • An overview of major critical approaches, changes in the canon and directions of current and future research • Case studies in reading literary and critical texts • Annotated bibliography (including websites), timeline, glossary of critical terms. The Eighteenth-Century Literature Handbook is an invaluable introduction to literature and culture in the eighteenth century.

Culture and literature, indeed intellectual life as a whole, in eighteenth-century Britain were characterized by complex internal tensions as well as influenced by the unprecedented atmosphere of major political, cultural and social change which led to the revolutions at end of the century. Furthermore, the diffusion of periodicals and newspapers, which formed the basis of public conversation in urban coffee-houses, functioned as a vehicle for the dispersion of works which publicly mirrored a private society in the process of transformation. The focus on this change and the circulation of new ideas on taste and polite society as well as on culture and literature can be found in the continual intertwining between the public and the private spheres of society. The aim of the first part of this collection of original, unpublished essays by young international scholars is to investigate the dynamics of these “overlapping” spheres through new readings of eighteenth-century literary works which not only analysed the mechanisms of the private and public spheres, but also highlighted some remarkable cultural features, such as clothing and fashion, gossip and gender issues. As suggested by the title, the second part of the collection will expand on the principal idea of “intersections” in eighteenth-century English literature: from the intersections linking the private and public spheres of British society, to those between eighteenth-century works within the British literary canon, taking into account the influence of European thought. The purpose of the second group of essays is thus that of offering fresh perspectives and a re-evaluation of literary and cultural reciprocal exchanges, in order to better locate or re-locate canonical works and authors within the eighteenth-century literary tradition.

The eighteenth-century salon played an important role in shaping literary culture, while both creating and sustaining transnational intellectual networks. Focusing on archival materials, this book is the first detailed examination of the literary salon in Ireland, considered in the wider contexts of contemporary salon culture in Britain and France.