Urban enlightenment and the eighteenth-century periodical essay : transatlantic retrospects / by Richard Squibbs.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Squibbs, Richard, author.

Series:

Palgrave studies in the Enlightenment, romanticism and cultures of print

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English essays--18th century--History and criticism.

English essays.

English periodicals--History--18th century.

English periodicals.

History.

Physical Description:

vii, 234 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Summary:

Urban Enlightenment and the Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essay is the first extensive literary history of the eighteenth-century British periodical essay, and the first to examine the critical reception and canonizing of the genre in a transatlantic context. Drawing on a wide range of early modern and Enlightenment essays, character writings and critical reviews, it argues that authors on both sides of the Atlantic came to regard the periodical essay as a literary means of transmitting moral-civic wisdom to posterity. As it traces the developments and changes in the genre across the century, this study devotes special attention to important but lesser-read mid-century London serials like the World and Connoisseur, the Edinburgh Mirror and Lounger, and Washington Irving's Salmagundi. By recovering the conception of literary citizenship that grounds these serials' claims to the notice of posterity, Urban Enlightenment gives new insights into the historical character of the Enlightenment literary public sphere. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction

Reviewing a genre

London's characters

Characters of the age

Public prospects

Scottish variations

Federalist revisions

Irving's Knickerbocker in retrospect

Afterword.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-228) and index.

ISBN:

9781137378231

1137378239

OCLC:

861358345