In recent years the canon of eighteenth-century poetry has greatly expanded to include women poets, labouring-class and provincial poets, and many previously unheard voices. Fairer’s book takes up the challenge this ought to pose to our traditional understanding of the subject. This book seeks to question some of the structures, categories, and labels that have given the age its reassuring shape in literary history. In doing so Fairer offers a fresh and detailed look at a wide range of material.

This anthology of 18th-century English poetry is extensively annotated for a new generation of readers. It combines the scope of a period anthology with the detailed annotations of an authoritative single-author edition. Selected poets include John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope and William Cowper. The guiding principle of the annotation is one of thoroughness: the editors concentrate on works where the meanings have changed, on primary allusions and on relevant details of social and political history.

For readers daunted by the formal structures and rhetorical sophistication of eighteenth-century English poetry, this introduction by John Sitter brings the techniques and the major poets of the period 1700–1785 triumphantly to life. Sitter begins by offering a guide to poetic forms ranging from heroic couplets to blank verse, then demonstrates how skilfully male and female poets of the period used them as vehicles for imaginative experience, feelings and ideas. He then provides detailed analyses of individual works by poets from Finch, Swift and Pope, to Gray, Cowper and Barbauld. An approachable introduction to English poetry and major poets of the eighteenth century, this book provides a grounding in poetic analysis useful to students and general readers of literature.

Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry recaptures for modern readers the urgency, distinctiveness and rewarding nature of this challenging and powerful body of poetry. An essential guide to reading eighteenth-century poetry, written by world-renowned critic, Patricia Meyer Spacks Exposes the multiplicity of forms, tones, and topics engaged by poets during this period Provides in-depth analysis of poems by established figures such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, as well as work by less familiar figures, including Anne Finch and Mary Leapor A broadly chronological structure incorporates close reading alongside insightful contextual and historical detail Captures the power and uniqueness of eighteenth-century poetry, creating an ideal guide for those returning to this period, or delving into it for the first time

Recent research into a self-taught tradition of English rural poetry has begun to offer a radically new dimension to our view of the role of poetry in the literary culture of the eighteenth century. In this important new study John Goodridge offers a detailed reading of key rural poems of the period, examines the ways in which eighteenth-century poets adapted Virgilian Georgic models, and reveals an illuminating link between rural poetry and agricultural and folkloric developments. Goodridge compares poetic accounts of rural labour by James Thomson, Stephen Duck, and Mary Collier, and makes a close analysis of one of the largely forgotten didactic epics of the eighteenth century, John Dyer's The Fleece. Through an exploration of the purpose of rural poetry and how it relates to the real world, Goodridge breaks through the often brittle surface of eighteenth-century poetry, to show how it reflects the ideologies and realities of contemporary life.

This book analyzes major premises and practices of eighteenth-century English poets.

Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Rise of the Novel Reconsidered beginswith the brute fact that poetry jostledup alongside novels in the bookstallsof eighteenth-century England. Indeed,by exploringunexpected collisions and collusionsbetween poetry and novels, this volumeof exciting, new essays offers a reconsideration of the literary and cultural history of the period. Thenovel poached from and featured poetry, and the “modern” subjects and objects privileged by “rise of the novel” scholarship are only one part of a world full of animate things and people with indistinct boundaries. Contributors: Margaret Doody, David Fairer, Sophie Gee, Heather Keenleyside, ShelleyKing, Christina Lupton, Kate Parker, Natalie Phillips, Aran Ruth, Wolfram Schmidgen, Joshua Swidzinski, and Courtney Weiss Smith.