This Concise Companion presents fresh perspectives on eighteenth-century literature and culture. In a series of original essays, it contributes to current debates in the field on subjects as diverse as the public sphere, travel and exploration, scientific rhetoric, gender and the book trade, gardening, and historical versus literary perceptions of life on London streets. It also discusses the changing nature of poetry, drama, periodical essays, the novel, and literary criticism, searching out connections between the remarkable number of new genres that appeared in the eighteenth century.

The contributors include both familiar names and newcomers to the field. Each of them combines meticulous scholarship with clear, engaging writing and vivid, innovative perceptions on the relationships between literature and culture. Crossing conventional disciplinary lines, they demonstrate how philosophy, history, politics and social theory both influenced and were influenced by literature in this period.

Cynthia Wall is Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London (1998) and an editor of Pope and Defoe.