Matthew Martin finds himself on the threshold of becoming a teenager in suburban America and experiences conflicting emotions regarding his future.

Excerpt from The Periodical Essayists of the Eighteenth Century With Illustrative Extracts, From the Rarer Periodicals The present work is an endeavour to give an approximately complete and detailed survey of the periodical essay of the eighteenth century and its writers. In the preparation of the work, the author has seen and examined over one hundred and fifty periodicals. Many of these are now exceedingly rare, and full use has been made of the valuable collections in the great libraries: The British Museum Library, London; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Advocates', the Signet, and the University Libraries, Edinburgh. In addition the author has been privileged to see a number of periodicals in private collections. The question of arrangement presented difficulties. The simplest solution was to adopt as far as possible a chronological plan. The advantages of this scheme outweighed the disadvantage of a certain "catalogue-y" effect which was almost inevitable when so many periodicals were being passed under review. A number of illustrative extracts support the critical statements made. Up to the present time no work has appeared devoted exclusively to this subject and limited to this period. The work of Nathan Drake, carried out over a century ago, is only a partial exception to this statement. Accordingly it is hoped that this endeavour to deal with the whole field of the periodical essay in the eighteenth century may be found to be a contribution, however small, to the elucidation of the subject under review. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Urban Enlightenment offers the first literary history of the British periodical essay spanning the entire eighteenth century, and the first to study the genre's development and cultural impact in a transatlantic context.

Similar to the "digital revolution" of the last century, the colonial and early national periods were a time of improved print technologies, exploding information, faster communications, and a fundamental reinventing of publishing and media processes. Between the early 1700s, when periodical publications struggled, and the late 1790s, when print media surged ahead, print culture was radically transformed by a liberal market economy, innovative printing and papermaking techniques, improved distribution processes, and higher literacy rates, meaning that information, particularly in the form of newspapers and magazines, was available more quickly and widely to people than ever before. These changes generated new literary genres and new relationships between authors and their audiences. The study of periodical literature and print culture in the eighteenth century has provided a more intimate view into the lives and tastes of early Americans, as well as enabled researchers to further investigate a plethora of subjects and discourses having to do with the Atlantic world and the formation of an American republic. Periodical Literature in Eighteenth-Century America is a collection of essays that delves into many of these unique magazines and newspapers and their intersections as print media, as well as into what these publications reveal about the cultural, ideological, and literary issues of the period; the resulting research is interdisciplinary, combining the fields of history, literature, and cultural studies. The essays explore many evolving issues in an emerging America: scientific inquiry, race, ethnicity, gender, and religious belief all found voice in various early periodicals. The differences between the pre- and post-Revolutionary periodicals and performativity are discussed, as are vital immigration, class, and settlement issues. Political topics, such as the emergence of democratic institutions and dissent, the formation of early parties, and the development of regional, national, and transnational cultural identities are also covered. Using digital databases and recent poststructural and cultural theories, this book returns us to the periodicals archive and regenerates the ideological and discursive landscape of early American literature in provocative ways; it will be of value to anyone interested in the crosscurrents of early American history, book history, and cultural studies. Mark L. Kamrath is associate professor of English at the University of Central Florida. Sharon M. Harris is Lorraine Sherley Professor of Literature at Texas Christian University.