Literature and Society in Eighteenth-Century England: Ideology, Politics and Culture, 1680-1820 (Themes In British Social History)

A broad-ranging study by one of the leading authorities on the "long eighteenth-century" which uses a huge variety of contemporary literary texts as historical evidence to explain the dominant ideologies and attitudes of the time. In the process Professor Speck advances current debates concerning continuity and change in the eighteenth century, and considers the implications on policy of an increasingly news conscious and articulate society.