Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch


Book Description

"Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch" is a literary critique of the play by the eighteenth century Scottish poet and dramatist. The play Elvira was essentially a translation or adaptation of Lamotte-Houdar's French tragedy Inès de Castro, a piece published forty years before, but the English audience of 1763 saw in it a compliment to the King of Portugal, whose cause against Spain Great Britain had espoused towards the end of the Seven Years' War. This novel examines the heavy political and romantic themes of the play.







The Critical Review


Book Description

Each number includes a classified "Monthly catalogue."




The Invention of English Criticism


Book Description

Early literary criticism was undisciplined. Unlike the staid essays and monographs of later academic scholarship, English criticism first appeared in the contentious world of the London theater: dramatists and other poets argued about their craft in contending prefaces and dedications, and their disputes spilled into the public sphere in pamphlet wars, mock epics, lampoons, and even novels. Across these forms, criticism was personal, political, and unconcerned with analysis for its own sake. Yet this unruly discourse laid the groundwork both for modern literary criticism and for the discipline of literary studies. The Invention of English Criticism explores the earliest uses of criticism and the attempts by some to convert a field of literary debate into an archive of useful knowledge. Criticism's undisciplined past thus illuminates its contested, ambivalent, and never fully disciplined present.




The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 2, 1660-1800


Book Description

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 2 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.




David Garrick and the Mediation of Celebrity


Book Description

What happens when an actor owns shares in the stage on which he performs and the newspapers that review his performances? Celebrity that lasts over 240 years. From 1741, David Garrick dominated the London theatre world as the progenitor of a new 'natural' style of acting. From 1747 to 1776, he was a part-owner and manager of Drury Lane, controlling most aspects of the theatre's life. In a spectacular foreshadowing of today's media convergences, he also owned shares in papers including the St James's Chronicle and the Public Advertiser, which advertised and reviewed Drury Lane's theatrical productions. This book explores the nearly inconceivable level of cultural power generated by Garrick's entrepreneurial manufacture and mediation of his own celebrity. Using new technologies and extensive archival research, this book uncovers fresh material concerning Garrick's ownership and manipulation of the media, offering timely reflections for theatre history and media studies.




Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763


Book Description

Boswell was the most charming companion in the world, and London becomes his dining room and his playground, his club and his confessional. No celebrant of the London world can ignore his book.'Peter Ackroyd, from the ForewordIn 1762 James Boswell, then twenty-two years old, left Edinburgh for London. The famous Journal he kept during the next nine months is an intimate account of his encounters with the high-life and the low-life in London. Frank and confessional as a personal portrait of the young Boswell, the Journal is also revealing as a vivid portrayal of life in eighteenth-century London. This new edition includes a Foreword by Peter Ackroyd, which discusses Boswell's life and achievement.Key Features:* Features a new Foreword by Peter Ackroyd, author of London: The Biography* This edition of Boswell's classic text has long been recognised as THE authoritative version* Edited by the renowned Boswell expert, the late Frederick A. Pottle* Includes a first-class introduction and informative notes throughout




Association and Enlightenment


Book Description

Social clubs as they existed in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland were varied: they could be convivial, sporting, or scholarly, or they could be a significant and dynamic social force, committed to improvement and national regeneration as well as to sociability. The essays in this volume examine the complex history of clubs and societies in Scotland from 1700 to 1830. Contributors address attitudes toward associations, their meeting places and rituals, their links with the growth of the professions and with literary culture, and the ways in which they were structured by both class and gender. By widening the context in which clubs and societies are set, the collection offers a new framework for understanding them, bringing together the inheritance of the Scottish past, the unique and cohesive polite culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the broader context of associational patterns common to Britain, Ireland, and beyond.




Boswell and the Press


Book Description

Boswell and the Press: Essays on the Ephemeral Writing of James Boswell is the first sustained examination of James Boswell’s ephemeral writing, his contributions to periodicals, his pamphlets, and his broadsides. The essays collected here enhance our comprehension of his interests, capabilities, and proclivities as an author and refine our understanding of how the print environment in which he worked influenced what he wrote and how he wrote it. This book will also be of interest to historians of journalism and the publishing industry of eighteenth-century Britain.




Boswell's Life of Johnson


Book Description

This book is an abridged and edited version of James Boswell's classic work, "Life of Johnson," featuring an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood, a professor of English at Princeton University. In this abridgement, most of Boswell's criticisms, comments, and notes have been omitted, as well as Johnson's opinions in legal cases and parts of the conversation that were more important in Boswell's time than now. The book contains enough of the original work to illustrate all the phases of Johnson's mind and the time that Boswell observed. The book discusses the artistry of Boswell's work and its importance as a biography.