A Tory pamphleteer, playwright and satirical historian, Delarivier Manley was regarded by her contemporaries Jonathan Swift and Robert Harley as a key member of the Tory propaganda team. This biograph
John Gay was a dramatist and poet, best-known for writing The Beggar's Opera. Through his membership of the Scriblerus Club, Gay developed lasting friendships with Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and J
John Toland was notorious. A pamphleteer, a polemicist and a prankster of the first order, modern scholarship has struggled to position his writings within the debates of his day. This study is the fi
Johnson rose from obscure origins to become a major literary figure of the eighteenth century. Through a detailed survey of his major works and political journalism, Hudson constructs a complex pictur
Speck's biography examines Paine's work afresh, in light of new thinking about the role of religion in the formation of his political ideology, and also places Paine within the recently-developed cont
While under arrest in 1750 on suspicion of producing a seditious pamphlet Eliza Haywood insisted she ‘never wrote any thing in a political way’. This study of the life and works, the first full-length
A Political Biography of Sarah Fielding provides the most complete discussion of Fielding’s works and career currently available. Tracing the development of Fielding’s artistic and instructive agendas
One of the most durable eighteenth-century writers, Joseph Addison (1672–1719) is best remembered for his sparkling and rangy entries in the Tatler (1709–11) and the Spectator (1711–12), both co-edite
