For a comprehensive look at research on eighteenth-century literature, see the guide below.
Literary Research and the British Eighteenth Century
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ISBN: 0810887959
Publication Date: 2013-02-21
This volume explores primary and secondary resources, including general literary research guides; union library catalogs; print and online bibliographies; scholarly journals; manuscripts and archives; 18th-century books, newspapers, and periodicals; contemporary reception; and electronic texts and journals, as well as Web resources. Each chapter addresses the research methods and tools best used to extract relevant information and compares and evaluates sources, making this book an invaluable guide to any literary scholar and student of the British eighteenth century.
Introductions and Overviews
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing 1660 - 1789 by Paul Baines; Julian Ferraro; Pat Rogers
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ISBN: 9781444390070
Publication Date: 2010-10-28
Features coverage of the lives and works of almost 500 notable writers based in the British Isles from the return of the British monarchy in 1660 until the French Revolution of 1789.
The Cambridge Introduction to the Eighteenth-Century Novel by April London
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ISBN: 9780521719674
Publication Date: 2012-04-05
Considers the development of the novel in its formative period in Britain. Rather than present its history as a linear progression, April London gives an original new structure to the field, organizing it through three broad thematic clusters – identity, community and history.
The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780 by John Richetti (Editor)
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ISBN: 0521781442
Publication Date: 2005-01-06
Offering essays on the range of English literature produced in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this collection presents new historical perspectives and critical approaches to the classic authors and texts of the period. Neglected authors and themes, as well as new and emerging genres within the expanding print market, are discussed in their social and historical contexts. The volume also includes a complete chronology and bibliographies.
Eighteenth Century English Literature by Charlotte Sussman
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ISBN: 9780745625157
Publication Date: 2011-11-14
This book introduces new readers of eighteenth-century texts to some of the major works, authors, and debates of a key period of literary history. Rather than simply providing a chronological survey of the era, this book analyzes the impact of significant cultural developments on literary themes and forms - including urbanization, colonial, and mercantile expansion, the emergence of the "public sphere," and changes in sex and gender roles.
The Long 18th Century by Paul Baines
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ISBN: 0340813725
Publication Date: 2004-06-25
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.
Background / Biographies
Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online (DLB)
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Provides the full text of thousands of biographical and critical essays on important literary figures from all eras, genres, and geographic areas. Many essays include manuscript pages, portraits, excerpts of criticism, bibliographies, and more. Browse by author or by volume, or search the full text. Publication of DLB began in 1978 and is ongoing.
Literature Resource Center
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Provides biographies, bibliographies and scholarly articles on novelists, poets, essayists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of highly-studied authors.
Selected Companions to 18th-Century Literature
A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century English Novel and Culture
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ISBN: 1405101571
Publication Date: 2005-12-23
Furnishes readers with a sophisticated vision of the eighteenth-century novel in its political, aesthetic, and moral context Foregrounds those topics of most historical and political relevance to the twenty-first century Explores formative influences on the eighteenth-century novel, its engagement with the major issues and philosophies of the period, and its lasting legacy Covers both traditional themes, such as narrative authority and print culture, and cutting-edge topics, such as globalization, nationhood, technology, and science Considers both canonical and non-canonical literature
The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry by John Sitter (Editor)
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ISBN: 0521658853
Publication Date: 2001-03-26
Analyzes major premises, preoccupations, and practices of English poets writing from 1700 to the 1790s. Chapters consider such large poetic themes as nature, the city, political passions, the relation of death to desire and dreams, appeals to an imagined future, and the meanings of sensibility'. Other chapters explore historical developments such as the connection between poetic couplets and conversation, the conditions of publication, changing theories of poetry and imagination, growing numbers of women poets and readers, the rise of a self-consciously national tradition, and the place of lyric poetry in thought and practice.
The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730-1830 by Jane Moody (Editor); Daniel O'Quinn
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ISBN: 9780521852371
Publication Date: 2007-10-25
The scope of the volume extends from the age of Garrick to the Romantic transformation of acting inaugurated by Edmund Kean. It brings together cutting-edge scholarship from leading international scholars in the long eighteenth century, offering lively and original insights into the world of the stage, its most influential playwrights and the professional lives of celebrated performers such as James Quin, George Anne Bellamy, John Philip Kemble, Dora Jordan, Fanny Abington and Sarah Siddons.
The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel by John Richetti (Editor)
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ISBN: 0521429455
Publication Date: 1996-09-05
This multifaceted picture of the British novel in its formative decades provides an indispensable guide for students of the eighteenth-century novel, and its place within the culture of its time. Drawing on new research in social and political history, the twelve contributors to this Companion challenge and refine the traditional view of the novel's origins and purposes. Sentimental and Gothic fiction, and fiction by women, are discussed, alongside detailed readings of work by Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Henry Fielding, Sterne, Smollett and Burney.
The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740-1830 by Thomas Keymer (Editor); Jon Mee (Editor)
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ISBN: 0521007577
Publication Date: 2004-06-17
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.
The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1650-1740 by Steven N. Zwicker (Editor)
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ISBN: 0521564883
Publication Date: 1998-06-18
This volume offers an account of English literary culture in one of its most volatile moments, when literature was enmeshed with the extremes of social, political and sexual experience. Newly-commissioned essays make use of current critical perspectives in order to offer new insight into the literature of Restoration and early eighteenth-century England in all its variety, from vitriolic satire to heroic verse. The volume's chronologies and select bibliographies will guide the reader through texts and events, while the fourteen essays commissioned for this Companion will allow us to read the period anew.
A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry by Neil Roberts; Christine Gerrard (Editor)
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ISBN: 1405113162
Publication Date: 2006-09-25
This broad-ranging companion gives readers a thorough grounding in both the background and the substance of eighteenth-century poetry in all its rich variety. An up-to-date and wide-ranging guide to eighteenth-century poetry, this book reflects the dramatic transformation which has taken place in the study of eighteenth-century poetry over the past two decades. The companion opens with a section on contexts, discussing poetry's relationships with patriotism, politics, science, and the visual arts, for example; discusses poetry by male and female poets from all walks of life. Includes numerous close readings of individual poems. Designed to be used alongside David Fairer and Christine Gerrard's Eighteenth-century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell Publishing, Second Edition, 2003).