Eighteenth Century

<p>The aim of this book originally published in 1978 is to make the reading of literary classics such as <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i> <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> <i>Tom Jones</i> <i>The Beggar’s Opera</i> and <i>Tristram Shandy</i> an even richer experience by giving them an intelligible place in history. The ‘context’ is seen not as a vague backcloth but as a living fabric of ideas and events which animate Augustan literature. The authors cover the achievements of men like Hume Walpole Chippendale Newton and Reynolds who are often merely names to the literary student and show how writers were affected by exciting developments in psychology aesthetics medicine and other fields. As a whole the book shows this period to have been an active questing and complex era whose literary masterpieces emanate from a rich and diverse culture.</p>