A Concise Companion to the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

This Concise Companion presents fresh perspectives on eighteenth–century literature and culture. In a series of original essays, it contributes to current debates in the field on subjects as diverse as the public sphere, travel and exploration, scientific rhetoric, gender and the book trade, gardening, and historical versus literary perceptions of life on London streets. It also discusses the changing nature of poetry, drama, periodical essays, the novel, and literary criticism, searching out connections between the remarkable number of new genres that appeared in the eighteenth century. The contributors include both familiar names and newcomers to the field. Each of them combines meticulous scholarship with clear, engaging writing and vivid, innovative perceptions on the relationships between literature and culture. Crossing conventional disciplinary lines, they demonstrate how philosophy, history, politics and social theory both influenced and were influenced by literature in this period.

List of Illustrations. Notes on Contributors. Introduction: Cynthia Wall. 1. Trade, travel and empire: “Knowing other places 1660–1800”: Miles Ogborn (University of London) and Charles W. J. Withers (University of Edinburgh). 2. Scientific investigations: “Paradise regained: the rhetoric of English experimentalism”: Joanna Picciotto (Princeton University). 3. Public and private: “The myth of the bourgeois public sphere”: J. A. Downie (University of London). 4. The Streets: “Literary beggars and the reality of street life in eighteenth–century London”: Tim Hitchcock (University of Hertfordshire). 5. The Sewers: Ordure, Effluence and Excess in the Eighteenth Century: Sophie Gee (Princeton University). 6. The Novel: “Novels in the world of moving goods”: Deidre Shauna Lynch (Indiana University). 7. The Gothic: “Moving in the world of novels”: Mark Blackwell (University of Hartford). 8. Gendering Texts: “‘The Abuse of Title Pages’: men writing as women”: Susan Staves (Brandeis University). 9. Drama: “Dramatic changes”: John O’Brien (University of Virginia). 10. Poetry: “Poetry of occasions”: J. Paul Hunter (University of Virginia). 11. Forms of Sublimity: The Garden, the Georgic, the Nation: Rachel Crawford (University of San Francisco). 12. Criticism: “Literary history and literary historicism: Mark Salber Phillips (Carleton University). Index

Cynthia Wall is Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London (1998) and an editor of Pope and Defoe.