The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1: The Middle Ages through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (Norton Anthology of English Literature)

The late eighteenth century witnessed an explosion of intellectual activity in Scotland by such luminaries as David Hume, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, James Boswell, and Robert Burns. And the books written by these seminal thinkers made a significant mark during their time in almost every field of polite literature and higher learning throughout Britain, Europe, and the Americas.

In this magisterial history, Richard B. Sher breaks new ground for our understanding of the Enlightenment and the forgotten role of publishing during that period. The Enlightenment and the Book seeks to remedy the common misperception that such classics as The Wealth of Nations and The Life of Samuel Johnson were written by authors who eyed their publishers as minor functionaries in their profession. To the contrary, Sher shows how the process of bookmaking during the late eighteenth-century involved a deeply complex partnership between authors and their publishers, one in which writers saw the book industry not only as pivotal in the dissemination of their ideas, but also as crucial to their dreams of fame and monetary gain. Similarly, Sher demonstrates that publishers were involved in the project of bookmaking in order to advance human knowledge as well as to accumulate profits.

The Enlightenment and the Book explores this tension between creativity and commerce that still exists in scholarly publishing today. Lavishly illustrated and elegantly conceived, it will be must reading for anyone interested in the history of the book or the production and diffusion of Enlightenment thought.

For the first time ever, the acclaimed Norton Anthology of English Literature is available in six separate volumes, each of which cover a specific period of English lit and focus on the wide range of writers and literature, with full annotation and commentary. Adapted unabridged from the full Norton Anthology, this volume is ideal for focused study or specific coursework in the period.

This extraordinary 4,500 page collection contains Great Britain's finest literature from the Middle Ages through the 20th century. Included are selections from "Beowulf," Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," works by Spenser (excerpts from all books of "The Faerie Queene"), Sir Thomas Malory, Shakespeare (including "The Tempest'), Marlowe ("Dr. Faustus," "Hero and Leander"), John Donne, and Milton. There are over 100 pages devoted to William Blake, including "The Book of Thel," and the entire "Night the Ninth" from "The Four Zoas." It also contains poems and prose by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Byron. And this is just a small sample.

In addition to the general editors Frank Kermode and John Hollander, the anthology has been edited and annotated by Harold Bloom, Martin Price, J.B. Trapp, and Lionel Trilling. The editors contribute brief period introductions, biographical and critical pieces for major authors, and essays preceding the major selections.

There are almost 300 wonderful illustrations included in the collection, representing important artists and their works for each period, that demonstrate the relationship between literary and visual images.

I have read through this wonderful anthology many times over the years, and never fail to learn something new, something to excite my imagination, with each reading. Highest Kudos!
JANA

In the context of extensive research into printed accounts of both male and female prostitution—among them sermons, popular prostitute biographies, satire, pornography, brothel guides, reformist writing, and travel narratives—Rosenthal offers in-depth readings of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela and the responses to the latter novel (including Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela), Bernard Mandeville's defenses of prostitution, Daniel Defoe's Roxana, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and travel journals about the voyages of Captain Cook to the South Seas. Throughout, Rosenthal considers representations of the prostitute's own sexuality (desire, revulsion, etc.) to be key parts of the changing meaning of "the oldest profession."

Telling People What to Think: Early Eighteenth Century Periodicals from the Review to the Rambler

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Telling People What to Think: Early Eighteenth Century Periodicals from the Review to the Rambler
J.a. Downie
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0714645087

This collection of essays displays a number of different approaches to the most significant early eighteenth-century periodicals. The range is considerable: the critique of ideology and polemical strategy, the political history of the press, the rhetoric of the genre, and the material circumstances of periodical production all find a place. The periodical profoundly shaped the English reading public's ways of perceiving the social and political institutions of their own age.

In this study intended for general readers, eminent critic Patricia Meyer Spacks provides a fresh, engaging account of the early history of the English novel. Novel Beginnings departs from the traditional, narrow focus on the development of the realistic novel to emphasize the many kinds of experimentation that marked the genre in the eighteenth century before its conventions were firmly established in the nineteenth. Treating well-known works like Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy in conjunction with less familiar texts such as Sarah Fielding’s The Cry (a kind of hybrid novel and play) and Jane Barker’s A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (a novel of adventure replete with sentimental verse and numerous subnarratives), the book evokes the excitement of a multifaceted and unpredictable process of growth and change.
Investigating fiction throughout the 1700s, Spacks delineates the individuality of specific texts while suggesting connections among novels. She sketches a wide range of forms and themes, including Providential narratives, psychological thrillers, romans à clef, sentimental parables, political allegories, Gothic romances, and many others. These multiple narrative experiments show the impossibility of thinking of eighteenth-century fiction simply as a precursor to the nineteenth-century novel, Spacks shows. Instead, the vast variety of engagements with the problems of creating fiction demonstrates that literary history—by no means inexorable—might have taken quite a different course.