Book Description

Excerpt from The Periodical Essayists of the Eighteenth Century With Illustrative Extracts, From the Rarer Periodicals The present work is an endeavour to give an approximately complete and detailed survey of the periodical essay of the eighteenth century and its writers. In the preparation of the work, the author has seen and examined over one hundred and fifty periodicals. Many of these are now exceedingly rare, and full use has been made of the valuable collections in the great libraries: The British Museum Library, London; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Advocates', the Signet, and the University Libraries, Edinburgh. In addition the author has been privileged to see a number of periodicals in private collections. The question of arrangement presented difficulties. The simplest solution was to adopt as far as possible a chronological plan. The advantages of this scheme outweighed the disadvantage of a certain "catalogue-y" effect which was almost inevitable when so many periodicals were being passed under review. A number of illustrative extracts support the critical statements made. Up to the present time no work has appeared devoted exclusively to this subject and limited to this period. The work of Nathan Drake, carried out over a century ago, is only a partial exception to this statement. Accordingly it is hoped that this endeavour to deal with the whole field of the periodical essay in the eighteenth century may be found to be a contribution, however small, to the elucidation of the subject under review. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.