Eighteenth-Century Political Biographies

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In the early eighteenth century, prose fiction with a political edge such as Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels or Manley’s The New Atalantis was immensely popular. More satire was written in the same period than any other form of verse, as the publication of huge numbers of poems on affairs of state attests. And until the theatrical Licensing Act put an end to it in 1737, increasingly political element was evident in writing for the stage also.

The most prominent writers of the day, including Swift and Defoe, Addison and Steele, Pope, Gay, Fielding and Johnson, were actively involved in writing pamphlets and periodical essays which were overtly political. Other writers well-known in their own day whose literary reputations are beginning to rise once more after three centuries of comparative neglect—writers such as John Toland, Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood—were also heavily employed in the writing of political polemic.

By situating the writings of the period against the background of the lives of the men and women who wrote them, political biography provides present-day readers with an unrivalled means of recuperating the meaning of texts from the past. In the volumes in this series, writers’ political ideas are given due weight, and this, in turn, allows the modern reader to understand and to share their concerns.

Readership

The series will have a multi-disciplinary approach appealing to all scholars of History, Political Studies, Political Science, Political Thought, English Literature, Religion, and Philosophy in the eighteenth century period.

Editorial board

J A Downie is Professor of English at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has published widely on English literature and politics in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, including a biography of Swift, Jonathan Swift, Political Writer (1984). His other books include Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (1979) and To Settle the Succession of the State: Literature and Politics, 1678-1750 (1994). He has also edited the ‘Party Politics’ volume of Pickering & Chatto’s The Complete Works of Daniel Defoe, and is currently editing The Poor Man’s Plea and The Great Law of Subordination consider’d for the same series.

Published titles

• A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe
• A Political Biography of Delarivier Manley
• A Political Biography of Jonathan Swift

Forthcoming titles

• A Political Biography of Alexander Pope

  Pat Rogers

  (May 2009)
• A Political Biography of Eliza Haywood

  Kathryn King

  (2010)
• A Political Biography of Henry Fielding

  Alan Downie

  (May 2009)
• A Political Biography of John Arbuthnot

  Angus Ross

  (2010)
• A Political Biography of John Toland

  Michael Brown

  (June 2009)
• A Political Biography of Joseph Addison

  Alexander Pettit

  (2010)
• A Political Biography of Richard Steele

  Charles Knight

  (June 2009)

Download leaflet pdfs

• Eighteenth-Century Political Biographies: leaflet pdf

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