The New Foundling Hospital for Wit, 1768–1773
Editor Donald W Nichol
978 1 85196 808 4: 234x156mm: £275.00/$495.00
The New Foundling Hospital for Wit is one of the great, popular, yet overlooked collections of British satire. Its editors knew how to make audiences crave more in the way of the scandalous, salacious and outrageous. However, like all topical satire, its objects of attack have faded from public consciousness and little attention has been paid to this collection since it was first published. Few copies survive and no UK research library holds the full run of the first edition. This finely-edited three-volume facsimile edition seeks to redress the balance: the original text has been digitally enhanced and the edition benefits from full editorial apparatus including a substantial general introduction, a chronology, volume introductions, extensive endnotes, a biographical appendix, an author index, a first line index and a general index.
The New Foundling Hospital for Wit was published by the radical bookseller John Almon. Almon’s most notorious contributor, John Wilkes, provided poetry and prose as well as gathered contributions from recently deceased Hell-Fire friends like Charles Churchill, Robert Lloyd and Thomas Potter. Members of the theatre such as David Garrick, George Colman and Bonnell Thornton make cameos as living contributors to The New Foundling Hospital for Wit. Its importance lies in its consolidation of political commentary as satirical expression. As the printing press played a decisive role in disseminating unorthodox views during the English Civil War, and subsequently enabled Restoration writers like Dryden to publish both personal lampoons and satires in support of the monarchy, so it was used a century later with a greater sense of freedom to expose what it perceived to be the truth and to tackle the establishment, especially during the years leading up to the American Revolution. While Wilkes’s testing of the bounds of freedom of speech in the early days of political radicalism in the North Briton is well known, his involvement in The New Foundling Hospital for Wit has scarcely been noted by his biographers.
The New Foundling Hospital for Wit is invaluable to all academic departments concerned with Eighteenth-Century Studies. In particular it will appeal to historians and scholars of literature, politics, and the history of the press.
- The first time this important miscellany has been republished in full
- Each facsimile page is digitally cleaned and enhanced, significantly improving on the quality and legibility of the original
- General introduction, chronology and volume introductions
- Biographical appendix, author index, first-line index and general index in the final volume
Sample pages
- Ode to Lord Edgecombe's Pig (1773)
- Sample editorial notes
- Sample biographical appendix
- Sample of first line index
- Sample author index
Contents
Contributors include:
Mark Akenside; Christopher Anstey; John Armstrong; Francis Bacon; John Bancks; Richard Bentley; Richard Berenger; William Brereton; Jane Brereton; Isaac Hawkins Browne; George Canning; Lord Capel; Lord Carlisle; Elizabeth Carter; the Earl of Chesterfield; John Churchill; Charles Churchill; Lord Clare; George Colman; William Congreve; John Duncombe; Thomas Edwards; David Garrick; Thomas Gray; John Hackett; the Earl of Hardwicke; Mr Hartis; Lord Hervey; Lady Irwin; Soame Jenyns; William Kenrick; William King; Charlotte Lennox; Robert Lloyd; Lord Lyttelton; William Mason; Sir Joseph Mawbey; William Melmoth; Charles Sackville, Earl of Middlesex; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Corbyn Morris; Alexander Pope; Thomas Potter; Matthew Prior; William Pulteney, Earl of Bath; Sir Walter Raleigh; George Selwyn; William Shenstone; George Steevens; John Hall Stevenson; Countess Temple; James Thomson; Bonnell Thornton; Charles Townshend; Sir John Vanbrugh; Edmund Waller; Horace Walpole; Phillip, Duke Wharton; Caleb Whitefoord; Paul Whitehead; John Wilkes; Sir Charles Hanbury Williams; William Woty; Charles Yorke
Reviews
'Though known today only to specialists, [New Foundling Hospital for Wit] offers many insights into print culture, the history of satire, and the politics of late-18th-century Britain. This attractive facsimile edition should go some way toward giving it the attention it deserves. Although many libraries hold later 18th-century editions, complete sets of the first edition are exceedingly rare. Nichol has done valuable work by collecting them all in one place... Summing Up: Recommended'
–J T Lynch,CHOICE
'Mr Nichol's brilliant edition is indispensable for its insights into politics, print culture, literary history, and satire. It is also a hilarious read.'
– Deborah D Rogers, The Scriblerian