The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830

This 2004 volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes including taste and aesthetics, national identity and empire, and key cultural trends such as sensibility and the gothic. The second part pays close attention to the work of individual writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld and Austen, and to the role of literary schools such as the Lake and Cockney schools. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.

Offers unique and valuable overview bridging two important literary periods
Covers a wide range of topics and writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld and Austen
Accessibly written and comprehensive collection for students and scholars

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"The most interesting thing about this book is its apparent disregard for the conventional break between the 18th century and the Romantic period...Recommended." J.T. Lynch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, CHOICE

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Product details

Published: October 2012
Format: Adobe eBook Reader
ISBN: 9781139797344
Length: 0 pages
Weight: 0kg
Contains: 6 b/w illus.
Availability: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.

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Contents

List of illustrations
List of contributors
Preface
Part I. Contexts and Modes:
1. Readers, writers, critics, and the professionalization of literature Barbara M. Benedict
2. Criticism, taste, aesthetics Simon Jarvis
3. Literature and politics Michael Scrivener
4. Literature, national identity, and empire Saree Makdisi
5. Sensibility Susan Manning
6. Theatrical culture Gillian Russell
7. Gothic James Watt
Part II. Writers, Circles, Traditions:
8. Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Sarah Fielding Peter Sabor
9. Johnson, Boswell, and their circle Murray Pittock
10. Sterne and Romantic autobiography Thomas Keymer
11. Blake and the poetics of enthusiasm Jon Mee
12. 'Unsex'd Females': Barbauld, Robinson, and Smith Judith Pascoe
13. The Lake school: Wordsworth and Coleridge Paul Magnuson
14. Jane Austen and the invention of the serious modern novel Kathryn Sutherland
15. Keats, Shelley, Byron, and the Hunt circle Greg Kucich
16. John Clare and the traditions of labouring-class verse John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan.

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Contributors

Barbara M. Benedict, Simon Jarvis, Michael Scrivener, Saree Makdisi, Susan Manning, Gillian Russell, James Watt, Peter Sabor, Murray Pittock, Thomas Keymer, Jon Mee, Judith Pascoe, Paul Magnuson, Kathryn Sutherland, Greg Kucich, John Goodridge, Bridget Keegan

Editors

Thomas Keymer , University of Toronto
Thomas Keymer is Chancellor Jackman Professor of English at the University of Toronto, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. His recent books include Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel (2002), Richardson's Clarissa and the Eighteenth-Century Reader (paperback edition, 2004) and Pamela in the Marketplace: Literary Controversy and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (with Peter Sabor, 2005). He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to English Literature from 1740 to 1830 (with Jon Mee, 2004) and The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne (in progress), and co-general editor, with Peter Sabor, of The Cambridge Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (in progress).
Jon Mee , University of Warwick
Jon Mee was educated at Newcastle University and the University of Cambridge. After a Junior Research Fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford, he took up his first permanent position at the Australian National University. He returned to the University of Oxford to take up the Margaret Candfield Fellowship in English at University College and a post in the Oxford English Faculty. He moved to the University of Warwick in 2007 and then took his current position as Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of York in October 2013.

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