The Eighteenth Century

The aim of this book, originally published in 1978, is to make the reading of literary classics such as Gulliver’s Travels , Robinson Crusoe , Tom Jones , The Beggar’s Opera and Tristram Shandy an even richer experience by giving them an intelligible place in history. The ‘context’ is seen not as a vague backcloth, but as a living fabric of ideas and events which animate Augustan literature. The authors cover the achievements of men like Hume, Walpole, Chippendale, Newton and Reynolds, who are o