The Rise Of Robert Dodsley

The new biography of the publisher and bookseller who premiered the work of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson deftly integrates Dodsley's life story with the literary transition from court patronage to the age of print that paved the way for the Romantic movement of the 19th century. Solomon (English, Auburn U.) details the unique circumstances that led Dodsley from his position as a weaver's apprentice to his career as a playwright, culminating in his last incarnation as one of the most influential literary forces of his time. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Patriotism and Public Spirit is an innovative study of the formative influences shaping the early writings of the Irish-English statesman Edmund Burke and an early case-study of the relationship between the business of bookselling and the politics of criticism and persuasion. Through a radical reassessment of the impact of Burke's "Irishness" and of his relationship with the London-based publisher Robert Dodsley, the book argues that Burke saw Patriotism as the best way to combine public spirit with the reinforcement of civil order and to combat the use of coded partisan thinking to achieve the dominance of one section of the population over another. No other study has drawn so extensively on the literary and commercial network through which Burke's first writings were published to help explain them. By linking contemporary reinterpretations of the work of Patriot sympathizers and writers such as Alexander Pope and Lord Bolingbroke with generally neglected trends in religious and literary criticism in the Republic of Letters, this book provides new ways of understanding Burke's early publications. The results call into question fundamental assumptions about the course of "Enlightenment" thought and challenge currently dominant post-colonialist and Irish nationalist interpretations of the early Burke.

From Tottel's Miscellany (1557) to the last twentieth-century Oxford Book of English Verse (1999), anthologies have been a prime institution for the preservation and mediation of poetry. The importance of anthologies for creating and re-creating the canon of English poetry, for introducing ‘new' programmes of poetry, as a record of changing poetic fashions, audience tastes and reading practices, or as a profitable literary commodity has often been asserted. Despite its impact, however, the poetry anthology in itself has attracted surprisingly little critical interest in Britain or elsewhere in the English-speaking world. This volume is the first publication to explore the largely unmapped field of poetry anthologies in Britain. Essays written from a wide range of perspectives in literary and cultural studies, and the point of view of poets, editors, publishers and cultural institutions, aim to do justice to the typological, functional and historical variety with which this form of publication has manifested itself - from early modern print culture to the postmodern age of the world wide web.

Provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of the poetry, drama, fiction, and literary and cultural criticism produced from the Restoration of the English monarchy to the onset of the French Revolution Comprises over 340 entries arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Written by an international team of leading and emerging scholars Features an impressive scope and range of subjects: from courtship and circulating libraries, to the works of Samuel Johnson and Sarah Scott Includes coverage of both canonical and lesser-known authors, as well as entries addressing gender, sexuality, and other topics that have previously been underrepresented in traditional scholarship Represents the most comprehensive resource available on this period, and an indispensable guide to the rich diversity of British writing that ushered in the modern literary era 3 Volumes www.literatureencyclopedia.com

A study of British theatre historiography, from its origins in the Restoration to its development as an academic discipline in the twentieth century.

This fully annotated edition sheds much light on eighteenth-century British literary and publishing history.

"Lynda Mugglestone looks at the range of Johnson's writings on, and the complexity of his thinking about, language and lexicography. She shows how these reveal him probing problems not just of meaning and use but what he considered the related issues of control, obedience, and justice, as well as the difficulties of power when exerted over the 'sea of words'. She examines his attitudes to language change, loan words, spelling, history, and authority, describing, too, the evolution of his ideas about the nature, purpose, and methods of lexicography, and shows how these reflect his own and others' thinking about politics, culture, and society.