Hawkins' pioneering contribution to music history remains of significant interest today despite its unfavourable comparison to Burney's in his lifetime.

The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain over 1,300 letters written both to and from Bentham over a 50-year period, beginning in 1752 (aged three) with his earliest surviving letter to his grandmother, and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national scheme for the provision of poor relief. Against the background of the debates on the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789, to which he made significant contributions, Bentham worked first on producing a complete penal code, which involved him in detailed explorations of fundamental legal ideas, and then on his panopticon prison scheme. Despite developing a host of original and ground-breaking ideas, contained in a mass of manuscripts, he published little during these years, and remained, at the close of this period, a relatively obscure individual. Nevertheless, these volumes reveal how the foundations were laid for the remarkable rise of Benthamite utilitarianism in the early nineteenth century. Bentham’s correspondence reveals that in the late 1770s he was working intensively on developing a code of penal law, but also expanding his acquaintance and, to a moderate degree, enhancing his reputation as a legal thinker. A significant family event took place in 1779 when his brother Samuel went to Russia in order to make his fortune.

The years 1774-77 saw Fanny Burney's increasing occupation with Evelina, which she finally completed and presented to the publisher Thomas Lowndes. Like her novel, the journals and letters of this period reveal her artistic powers, as she continues to sketch characters with economy and precision and create convincing narratives out of the events of her life. Among the more memorable figures she meets at her father's London house are the "noble savage" Omai, the first Tahitian brought back to England; the famed explorer James "Abyssinian" Bruce, who returned from Africa with tales of natives who ate raw flesh; and Prince Aleksei Orlov of Russia, who had Czar Peter III murdered in order to permit Peter's wife, Catherine "the Great," to ascend the throne. Other notable figures include Dr Samuel Johnson and the great singer Lucrezia Agujari, admired by Mozart. Also in these pages, the usually diffident Miss Burney takes charge of her destiny by rebuffing her suitor Thomas Barlow, who has wealth, education, good looks, and the vehement approval of most of her family, but whom she finds a total bore. The journals and letters of Fanny Burney are an invaluable source for anyone interested in the social and literary history of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England. Lars Troide has supported the texts with thorough and detailed annotations.

A wide-ranging look at the interplay of opera and political ideas through the centuries The Politics of Opera takes readers on a fascinating journey into the entwined development of opera and politics, from the Renaissance through the turn of the nineteenth century. What political backdrops have shaped opera? How has opera conveyed the political ideas of its times? Delving into European history and thought and an array of music by such greats as Lully, Rameau, and Mozart, Mitchell Cohen reveals how politics—through story lines, symbols, harmonies, and musical motifs—has played an operatic role both robust and sotto voce. Cohen begins with opera's emergence under Medici absolutism in Florence during the late Renaissance—where debates by humanists, including Galileo's father, led to the first operas in the late sixteenth century. Taking readers to Mantua and Venice, where composer Claudio Monteverdi flourished, Cohen examines how early operatic works like Orfeo used mythology to reflect on governance and policy issues of the day, such as state jurisdictions and immigration. Cohen explores France in the ages of Louis XIV and the Enlightenment and Vienna before and during the French Revolution, where the deceptive lightness of Mozart's masterpieces touched on the havoc of misrule and hidden abuses of power. Cohen also looks at smaller works, including a one-act opera written and composed by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Essential characters, ancient and modern, make appearances throughout: Nero, Seneca, Machiavelli, Mazarin, Fenelon, Metastasio, Beaumarchais, Da Ponte, and many more. An engrossing book that will interest all who love opera and are intrigued by politics, The Politics of Opera offers a compelling investigation into the intersections of music and the state.