The pleasures of the imagination : English culture in the eighteenth century / John Brewer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brewer, John, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

England--Civilization--18th century.

England.

Civilization.

England--Social life and customs--18th century.

Manners and customs.

England--Intellectual life--18th century.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

xi, 564 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Routledge, 2013.

Summary:

The Pleasures of the Imagination examines the birth and development of English 'high culture' in the eighteenth century. It charts the growth of a literary and artistic world fostered by publishers, theatrical and musical impresarios, picture dealers and auctioneers, and presented to the public in coffee-houses, concert halls, libraries, theatres and pleasure gardens. In 1660, there were few professional authors, musicians and painters, no public concert series, galleries, newspaper critics or reviews. By the dawn of the nineteenth century they were all part of the cultural life of the nation. John Brewer's enthralling book explains how this happened and recreates the world in which the great works of English eighteenth-century art were made. Its purpose is to show how literature, painting, music and the theatre were communicated to a public increasingly avid for them. It explores the alleys and garrets of Grub Street, rummages the shelves of bookshops and libraries, peers through printsellers' shop windows and into artists' studios, and slips behind the scenes at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. It takes us out of Gay and Boswell's London to visit the debating clubs, poetry circles, ballrooms, concert halls, music festivals, theatres and assemblies that made the culture of English provincial towns, and shows us how the national landscape became one of Britain's greatest cultural treasures. It reveals to us a picture of English artistic and literary life in the eighteenth century less familiar, but more suprising, more various and more convincing than any we have seen before. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Contexts 13

1 Changing places: the court and the city 15

2 The pleasures of the imagination 55

Part II Print 109

3 Authors, publishers and the making of literary culture 111

4 Readers and the reading public 141

Part III Paint 165

5 The market and the academy 167

6 Connoisseurs and artists 204

7 Painters' practice, artists' lives 232

Part IV Performance 259

8 The Georgian stage 261

9 The theatre, power and commerce 287

10 Performance for the nation 308

Part V Making a national heritage 339

11 Borrowing, copying and collecting 341

Part VI Province and Nation 393

12 The English provinces 395

13 Thomas Bewick: 'The poet who lives on the banks of the Tyne' 399

14 'The harmony of heaven': John Marsh and provincial music 425

15 'Queen Muse of Britain': Anna Seward of Lichfield and the literary provinces 455

Part VII Britain 485

16 Culture, nature and nation 487.

Notes:

"First published in 1997 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Edition:

Reproduction of: Brewer, John, 1947- New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997 (xxx, 721 p., [12] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 24 cm.) Call number of original: DA485.B74 1997

ISBN:

0415658853

9780415658843

0415658845

9780415658850

OCLC:

802326024

Publisher Number:

99954251759