Order from confusion sprung: Studies in eighteenth-century literature from Swift to Cowper

Historically rigorous yet not a historicist, attuned to textual nuances yet not a theorist or deconstructionist, Rawson strikes me as in many ways exemplary, immensely readable and informative, judicious and humane ...a teacher in the best sense. Rawson may well be the most impressive critic now working in this period ...his method is as far from mechanical analysis as can be imagined.