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Authoritative yet accessible, this is the first-ever comprehensive account of a true landmark in eighteenth-century writing on Britain.
List of contents
Introduction; Part 1. Form and Function: 1. The identity of Britain; 2. Embedding and embodying the nation: Textual practices and form in the Tour; 3. The epic strain; 4. The shape of the nation; Part 2. Time: 5. The role of the Tour in the historiography of early modern Britain; 6. The Jacobite rising in the Tour: Preventing the ruin of Scotland; 7. The impact of the bubble; 8. Local proverbs and folk wisdom; Part 3. Place: 9. The uses of topography; 10. Road-testing the first turnpikes: Defoe's account of English highways; 11. Defoe on Bristol: The text with an introduction and annotation; 12. Atlas Maritimus: The case for Defoe's authorship.
About the author
Pat Rogers is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, formerly Eminent Scholar, and DeBartolo Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of South Florida. He has held fulltime teaching posts at the universities of Cambridge, London, Wales, and Bristol, and has published extensively on literature from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as teaching on courses up to the twentieth. His previous works on Defoe include The Text of Great Britain: Theme and Design in Defoe's Tour (1998); editions of the Tour (1971: 1989), Defoe: The Critical Heritage (1972), a study of Robinson Crusoe (1979), and an edition of Moll Flanders (1993). He is a contributor to the forthcoming collections The Oxford Handbook to Daniel Defoe and Defoe in Context (Cambridge).
Summary
This first comprehensive account of Daniel Defoe's Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain explores the content, sources, form, and historical significance of one of the foremost books written about Britain during the eighteenth century. Pat Rogers' study offers fresh interdisciplinary insight for both new readers and Defoe students.
Foreword
Authoritative yet accessible, this is the first-ever comprehensive account of a true landmark in eighteenth-century writing on Britain.
Additional text
In a career spanning over fifty years, Pat Rogers has produced a body of scholarship of lasting value, erudite, historically informed, and, above all, well-written. Defoe's Tour and Early Modern Britain adds a distinguished chapter to this long history of scholarly excellence. This is Rogers at his best, analysing historical and textual evidence with elegance and wit. Approaching the Tour from various points of interest, Rogers gives us the definitive critical account of Defoe's topographical masterpiece for our time as we mark the tercentenary of its publication. Albert Rivero, Marquette University
