Search results

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and mu...

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and mu...

The Court Journals and Letters of Frances Burney, 1790-91, is the sixth and final volume of Frances Burney's court journals and letters published by Oxford University Press. The journals and letters in this volume record Frances Burney's final eighteen months as Keeper of the Robes in Queen Charlotte's court. Burney had arrived at court in July of 1786, a reluctant but devoted royal servant. She tried to adjust to the isolation and confinement of court, but by 1790 Burney was increasingly distra...

Women novelists were among the most popular authors of the First Republic and First Empire, yet they are frequently overlooked in favour of their canonical male counterparts. Their penchant for sentimental novels has led some later critics to take their writing at face value as apolitical and domestic, at odds with France's violent convulsions. Furthermore, their carefully crafted presentation of natural settings has, thus far, been dismissed completely. Yet, as Christie Margrave shows, the nat...

A study of the production and circulation of literary manuscripts in Romantic-era Britain Offers a detailed examination of the practices of literary manuscript culture, particularly the production, circulation and preservation of manuscriptsDemonstrates how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, in a nuanced study of the interactions between the two mediaExamines the changing cultural attitudes towards literary manuscripts, and how these changes affected practices and valuesS...

'Hitchings is extremely good at unravelling Johnson's most bullish assertions . . . lucid and empathetic, scholarly but lively. A model Johnsonian, in fact.' The TimesThe World in Thirty-Eight Chapters or Dr Johnson's Guide to Life is a source of profound good sense about what it means to teach, read, write and travel. More than that, though, Henry Hitchings continually translates Samuel Johnson's experience of poverty, scorn, pain and madness into a rich understanding of how to be.Samuel Johnso...

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, as constant growth became the economic norm throughout Europe, fictional stories involving money were overwhelmingly about loss. Novel after novel tells the tale of bankruptcy and financial failure, of people losing everything and ending up in debtor's prison, of inheritances lost and daughters left orphaned and poor. In Downward Mobility, Katherine Binhammer argues that these stories of ruin are not simple tales about the losers of capitalism but narrat...

Aphra Behn, Susannah Centlivre, Hannah Cowley, and Elizabeth Inchbald were the only four female playwrights in England with multiple comic successes from 1670-1800. Behn's interest in the body, Centlivre's fascination with written contracts, Cowley's nationalism, and Inchbald's discussion of divorce emerge in the comic events that are animated by the psychological mechanisms of humor. Attending to the dialogue between these comic events and the plays' more predictable comic endings illuminates t...

From images of stewed missionaries to Hannibal Lecter's hiss, cannibals have intrigued while evoking horror and repulsion. The label of cannibal has been used throughout history to denigrate a given individual or group. By examining who is labelled cannibal at any given time, we can understand the fears, prejudices, accepted norms and taboos of society at that time. From the cannibal in colonial literature, to the idea of regional Gothic and the hillbilly cannibal, to serial killers, this book e...

An analysis of Johnson's relationship with the ethics and theology of the eighteenth century, examining the background to his views on a wide range of issues debated by the philosophers and divines of his age. The author emphasizes the ambivalence and contradiction inherent in the orthodoxy which Johnson espoused and challenges the assumption that Johnson's religious beliefs were unstable and filled with anxiety. He gained strength from the belief that he upheld an eminent tradition in Christian...

Originally published in 1972, Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal Under Stress, focuses upon the various disruptive forces in the literary culture of the Augustan period - upon 'Nature's Dance of Death'. His discussion centres on aspects of Fielding's writing in relation to Augustan culture and civilization. He also relates the works of such Augustans as Pope, Swift and Smollett, as well as some twentieth century writings, to his overall theme. He treats, among other topics the crises in styli...

This book assesses the mediating role played by 'affections' in eighteenth-century contestations about reason and passion, questioning their availability and desirability outside textual form. It examines the formulation and idealization of this affective category in works by Isaac Watts, Lord Shaftesbury, Mary Hays, William Godwin, Helen Maria Williams, and William Wordsworth. Part I outlines how affections are invested with utopian potential in theology, moral philosophy, and criticism, re-ima...