First published in 1978, Reviewing before the Edinburgh is a study of English literary reviewing during the fifteen years before the founding in1802 of the Edinburgh Review, and an assessment of the reviewers’ achievement. The long introductory chapter describes the aims, methods, staffing, readership, influence, and development of the five important Reviews of the 1790s: the Monthly Review, Critical Review, English Review, Analytical Review, and British Critic. The author argues that this type of Review declined during the 19th century, not because of poor performance, but because the ambitious aim of comprehensive reviewing had become impossible to achieve. The remaining chapters discuss and evaluate the work of these Reviews, chiefly in the fields of poetry, fiction, and political and religious controversy. The book fills a gap in the literary and political history of the period; provides a compact summary of its review criticism; and gives a better perspective on both reviewers and reviewed in years that were unusually fertile in political controversy and literary experiment. It will be of interest to students of literature and history.

Critical Forms is an account of the generic forms in which literary criticism has been undertaken. It examines chiefly Anglophone literary criticism, with comparative discussion of French and German material, from around 1750 to the present and examines prefaces, selections and anthologies, reviews, lectures, dialogues, letters, and life-writing. Though not intended to be an exhaustive history of the period, Critical Forms begins in the mid-eighteenth century with the emergence of something like the forms (chiefly, the essay and the treatise) in which criticism is still predominantly practised. In order at least to complicate this predominance, the book documents an abiding plurality in the forms of literary critical writing in the subsequent period, leading up to the present. Ross Wilson both questions the status of the essay and treatise as the 'natural' forms of literary criticism and shows that the history of literary criticism is much more formally various and innovative than the usual ways of recounting that history as a succession of schools and movements would allow. Critical Forms harbours the hope that it will make available a wider array of forms for the practice of literary criticism today; it is this hope that licenses its own experiments in critical form.

Influenced by Enlightenment principles and commercial transformations, the history of the book in the eighteenth century witnessed not only the final decades of the hand-press era but also developments and practices that pointed to its future: ’the foundations of modern copyright; a rapid growth in the publication, circulation, and reading of periodicals; the promotion of niche marketing; alterations to distribution networks; and the emergence of the publisher as a central figure in the book trade, to name a few.’ The pace and extent of these changes varied greatly within the different sociopolitical contexts across the western world. The volume’s twenty-four articles, many of which proffer broader theoretical implications beyond their specific focus, highlight the era’s range of developments. Complementing these articles, the introductory essay provides an overview of the eighteenth-century book and milestones in its history during this period while simultaneously identifying potential directions for new scholarship.

A thorough account of newspaper and periodical press history in Britain and Ireland from 1800-1900Provides a comprehensive history of the British and Irish Press from 1800-1900, reflected upon in 60 substantive chapters and focused case studiesSets out to capture the cross-regional and transnational dimension of press history in nineteenth-century Britain and IrelandOffers unique and important reassessments of nineteenth-century British and Irish press and periodical media within social, cultural, technological, economic and historical contextsThis is a unique collection of essays examining nineteenth-century British and Irish newspaper and periodical history during a key period of change and development. It covers an important point of expansion in periodical and press history across the four nations of Great Britain (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), concentrating on cross-border and transnational comparisons and contrasts in nineteenth-century print communication. Designed to provide readers with a clear understanding of the current state of research in the field, in addition to an extensive introduction, it includes forty newly commissioned chapters and case studies exploring a full range of press activity and press genres during this intense period of change. Along with keystone chapters on the economics of the press and periodicals, production processes, readership and distribution networks, and legal frameworks under which the press operated, the book examines a wide range of areas from religious, literary, political and medical press genres to analyses of overseas and migr press and emerging developments in children's and women's press.

The outbreak of revolution in Paris in 1789 forced Britain into a political and military conflict that had a profound impact on politics, economy, public discourse and cultural life well into the 19th century. The essays collected here examine the various responses to the revolution and the significant changes wrought within Britain by the events. Some essays discuss the ideological divisions within Britain and Ireland. Others take a closer look at the media and the debate on the press, and reinvestigate responses to the revolution by prominent contemporaries such as William Godwin, Dugald Stewart, and William Wordsworth.

This groundbreaking new source of international scope defines the essay as nonfictional prose texts of between one and 50 pages in length. The more than 500 entries by 275 contributors include entries on nationalities, various categories of essays such as generic (such as sermons, aphorisms), individual major works, notable writers, and periodicals that created a market for essays, and particularly famous or significant essays. The preface details the historical development of the essay, and the alphabetically arranged entries usually include biographical sketch, nationality, era, selected writings list, additional readings, and anthologies

Die europäische Romantik war nicht nur heterogen und intern zerstritten. Sie hatte sich auch gegen Aufklärung und Klassizismus zu verteidigen, welche um die Zeit der Französischen Revolution weiterlebten. Klassizisten betrachteten die Romantik als Anhäufung abtrünniger »neuer Schulen«, die das Monopol der Classical Tradition bedrohten. Die erbitterten Debatten in Ästhetik und Politik wurden auf beiden Seiten mit den überkommenen Strategien der klassischen »ars disputandi« geführt. Unter schwerstem satirischem Beschuss begann die Romantik, sich als eine Bewegung zu begreifen, und es entstand der problematische Gegensatz von »klassisch« und »romantisch«. Diese Konstruktion war aber unverzichtbar, um die Fronten im Wirrwarr der Stimmen zu klären, und blieb es auch in der Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, die auf solche Subsumptionen nicht verzichten kann. Die Classical Tradition, die das Christentum einschließt, erweist sich als ein laufender Prozess von der Antike bis heute.