The Long 18th Century (Contexts)

The Long 18th Century surveys the social and cultural matrices of British literature of the period 1660-1790. Taking a thematic approach, the book situates literary texts in the contexts from which they took their distinctive character and force. Literature shaped and responded to seismic political and economic changes, the problems of religious belief, the development of the science of mind and personality, conflict between country and city, and expanding world horizons. This book examines the effects of these sometimes conflicting pressures on poetry, prose and drama. The Long 18th Century looks at a range of major and less well known writers including Aphra Behn, James Boswell, John Bunyan, Susanna Centlivre, George Crabbe, Daniel Defoe, John Dryden, Sarah Fyge Egerton, Olaudah Equiano, Henry Fielding, Anne Finch, John Gay, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray, Samuel Johnson, Mary Leapor, John Milton, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson, Jonathan Swift and James Thomson.