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Reading 1759 investigates the literary culture of a remarkable year in British and French writing, and ideas. Examining key works by Johnson, Voltaire, Sterne, Adam Smith, Sarah Fielding, and Christopher Smart, the volume presents a wide-ranging account of the year's work in literature and the key issues that preoccupied writers at this time.
List of contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction by Shaun Regan
I. Writing Empire
1. "What mankind has lost and gained": Johnson, Rasselas, and Colonialism by James Watt
2.. Voltaire's Candide as a Global Text: War, Slavery, and Leadership by Simon Davies
II. Sentimental Ethics, Luxurious Sexualities
3. Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759: Spectatorship, Duty, and Social Improvement by Nigel Wood
4. "On the soft beds of luxury most kingdoms have expired": 1759 and the Lives of Prostitutes by Mary Peace
III. Authorship and Aesthetics
5. Young, Goldsmith, Johnson, and the Idea of the Author in 1759 by Adam Rounce
6. Towards a New Language: Sublime Aesthetics in Smart's Jubilate Agno by Rosalind Powell
IV. Enlightenment and its Discontents
7. The Encyclopédie in 1759: Crisis and Continuation by Rebecca Ford
8. Lost Cause: Hume, Causation, and Rasselas by James Ward
V. Originality and Appropriation
9. Eccentricity, Originality, and the Novel: Tristram Shandy, volumes 1 and 2 by Moyra Haslett
10. Shakespeare's "Propriety" and the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Novel: Sarah Fielding's The History of the Countess of Dellwyn by Kate Rumbold
VI. Conclusion: Reading 1759
11. Writers, Reviewers, and the Culture of Reading by Shaun Regan
Bibliography
About the Contributors
About the author
Edited by Shaun Regan
Summary
Reading 1759 investigates the literary culture of a remarkable year in British and French writing, and ideas. Examining key works by Johnson, Voltaire, Sterne, Adam Smith, Sarah Fielding, and Christopher Smart, the volume presents a wide-ranging account of the year’s work in literature and the key issues that preoccupied writers at this time.
