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by subscription, with a single volume being released each year for six years, a model that garnered Pope enough money to be able to live off his work alone, one of the few English poets in history to have been able to do so.

In 1719, following the death of his father, Pope moved to an estate at Twickenham, where he would live for the remainder of his life. Here he constructed his famous grotto, and went on to translate the Odyssey – which he brought out under the same subscription model as the Iliad – and to compile a heavily-criticized edition of Shakespeare, in which Pope “corrected” the Bard’s meter and made several alterations to the text, while leaving corruptions in earlier editions intact.

Pope published Essay on Man in 1734, and the following year a scandal broke out when an apparently unauthorized and heavily sanitized edition of Pope’s letters was released by the notoriously reprobate publisher Edmund Curll (collections of correspondence were rare during the period).

Pope’s output slowed after 1738 as his health, never good, began to fail. He revised and completed the Dunciad, this time substituting the famously inept Colley Cibber – at that time, the country’s poet laureate – for Theobald in the role of chief dunce. He began work on an epic in blank verse entitled Brutus, which he quickly abandoned; only a handful of lines survive. Alexander Pope died at Twickenham, surrounded by friends, on May 25th, 1744.

In prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed by the development of the English essay. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The Spectator established the form of the British periodical essay. This was also the time when the English novel, first emerging in the Restoration, developed into a major art form.

Daniel Defoe. Daniel Defoe was born in 1660 to James Foe (note the spelling), a chandler in St. Giles, Cripplegate, London. In 1695 the younger Foe adopted the more aristocratic sounding “Defoe” as his surname.

Defoe trained for the ministry at Morton’s Academy for Dissenters, but he never followed through on this plan, and instead worked briefly as a hosiery merchant before serving as a soldier for the king during Monmouth’ Rebellion.

Defoe was a prolific writer, and the first publication we know of appeared in 1688, but it was his The True Born Englishman (1701) which propelled him into the limelight.

Perhaps these experiences made him weary of the dangers inherent in political commentary, for in 1719 Defoe turned to fiction, writing Robinson

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Crusoe, based on the true account of a shipwrecked mariner. He followed the success of Crusoe with Captain Singleton (1720), Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Captain Jack (1722), Moll Flanders (1722), and Roxanda

(1724).

Defoe did not confine himself to fiction; he also wrote several popular travel books, including the vivid Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–1727). Before his death in 1731, Daniel Defoe published over 500 books and pamphlets.

Defoe is regarded as one of the founders of the English novel. Before his time fiction was primarily written in verse or in the form of plays, but Defoe and, to a lesser extent, Samuel Richardson, developed a new form of storytelling – one which remains with us today. He can also be credited with being one of the founding fathers of English journalism (whether that is a positive thing is open to debate).

Jonathan Swift. Swift’s prose style is unmannered and direct, with a clarity that few contemporaries matched. He was a profound skeptic about the modern world, but he was similarly profoundly distrustful of nostalgia. He saw in history a record of lies and vanity, and he saw in the present a madness of vanity and lies.

The author of the classic Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Jonathan Swift was a major figure of English literature. Also a satirist, cleric and political pamphleteer, Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland on November 30, 1667, seven months after the death of his father. Deprived of a bread earner and father, the family became very poor and had to rely on the aid of relatives to survive. Jonathan did not lead a healthy childhood, suffering from Meniere’s disease which causes dizziness, vertigo, nausea, and hearing loss affecting the inner ear. Early in age, Jonathan was sent to live with his uncle, Godwin Swift who supported him and gave him the best education possible.

Swift attended the Kilkenny Grammar School from 1674 to 1682 and later enrolled in the Trinity College in Dublin where he earned a B.A. degree. Although Swift wanted to continue studying for a M.A. degree, he was unable to do so due to political unrest during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Upon moving to Leicester, England, Swift took up a job working as a secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat. Living at his home in Moore Park, Surrey, Swift was introduced to a number of politically influential people. Also at Moore Park, Swift, then 22 years of age met Stella, daughter of another employee at Moore Park who was only 6 years old. They formed an affectionate friendly relationship and Swift became her

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tutor and mentor. Sir William Temple helped Swift gain admission into Oxford University using his influential connections. In 1692, Swift graduated with a M.A. degree.

After returning from Ireland where he served as an Anglican priest for a year, Swift was requested by Temple to assist him in writing his memoirs, managing and publishing his work after his death. Swift started work on his own writing during this time as well and wrote The Battle of the Books (1704).

In 1700, Swift was appointed Chaplin to Lord Berkeley and in 1701 Trinity College Dublin made him a Doctor of Divinity. In 1704, Swift published his humorous take on religion, A Tale of the Tub. Swift became an active figure of the Dublin society and politics becoming a blunt critic in efforts of improving Ireland. After joining the Tories in 1710, Swift wrote many noted political pamphlets including The Conduct of the Allies (1711),

The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714), Meditation on a Broomstick (1703) and A Modest Proposal.

Swift also published his masterpiece, Gulliver’s Travels under the pen name Lemuel Gulliver in 1726. An immediate best-seller, the book has inspired many theater and film adaptations. The novel represents the culmination of Swift’s years spent in politics with Whigs and Tories and also deals with socio-political issues hidden between the lines.

Jonathan Swift passed away on October 19, 1745.

Henry Fielding (1707–1745), novelist and playwright, who with Samuel

Richardson, is considered a founder of the English novel. Among his major novels are Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Joes (1749).

Fielding was born of a family that by tradition traced its descent to a branch of the Habsburgs. The 1st earl of Denbigh, William Fielding, was a direct ancestor, while Henry’s father, Col. Edmund Fielding, had served under John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, an early 18th-century general, “with much bravery and reputation.” His mother was a daughter of Sir Henry Gould, a judge of the Queen’s Bench, from whom she inherited property at East Stour, in Dorset, where the family moved when Fielding was three years old. His mother died just before his 11th birthday. His father having married again, Fielding was sent to Eton College, where he laid the foundations of his love of literature and his considerable knowledge of the classics. There he befriended George Lyttelton, who was later to be a statesman and an important patron to him.

In 1724 Fielding went to London to spend the next several years as a man-about-town and writer.

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In the summer of 1725 Henry met his distant cousin Sara Andrews to be his future wife (Sara had just become a rich heiress at the age of.). On September 2nd he was brought before the town’s magistrates on a charge of assault against Joseph Channon a servant of the town miller. Although the outcome is not known it is thought that the attack may have been at the instigation of Sara’s guardian Andrew Miller who had hopes that Sara would marry his own son John.

On Sunday 11th November matters came to a head when Henry assisted by his servant attempted to abduct Sara as she was walking to church with Andrew Tucker and his family. The attempt failed and the same day Tucker laid a charge before the magistrates against Fielding. His servant was soon captured, but Henry eluded capture by the constables and left the town the following day, but not before putting up a hand written poster ridiculing the Tuckers.

In 1728 his first comedy, ‘Love in Several Masques’, was played at the stage. It was not a success, and at the age of 21 he left to study at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands where it was much cheaper than any of the London schools. Eventually, even Leiden was more than he could afford and about a year later he returned to England with all kinds of unpaid debts behind him.

Henry began writing plays again, many of them arguing the society and politics of the time. Probably his best play was ‘The Tragedy of Tragedies; or,

The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great’. It was a mixture of heroic stage plays that took themselves too seriously.

Henry still couldn’t earn his money and was never well off. He married Charlotte Cradock of Salisbury, one of the beauties of the city, in 1734. Charlotte brought a settlement of £1,500 to the marriage and with the money they planned to live in Dorset. In 1735 the newly married couple took up residence in a small manor house at East Stour, settled into their comfortable lifestyle and bore a daughter Amelia. However within a year due to a combination of Henry’s spendthrift ways and poor budgeting the Fieldings were stony-broke, the estate sold, and the penniless young couple left Dorset to return to London, taking with them Charlotte’s maid Mary Macdaniel.

In London Fielding became the manager and chief playwright of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. Even though he was rumored to be a terrible drunkard and something of a womanizer, Henry was a hard worker. He wrote several new plays a year, until the theatre was forced to close by

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the stage Licensing Act was of 1737 which provided that only plays licensed by the government could be performed. The act having been introduced largely as a result of Fielding’s plays ridiculing the politics of the day.

By this time, Henry and Charlotte had two children needed another source of income. Henry took up the study of law and turned to writing for the newspapers, becoming editor of The Champion in 1739, and graduated as a lawyer in 1740. It was at this time that he developed gout, which was to get worse as he grew older.

Henry Fielding’s novel ‘Joseph Andrews’ was published in 1742. It was a comic takeoff on Samuel Richardson’s ‘Pamela’, but the success of ‘Joseph Andrews’ was made less sweet for Henry by the death of his daughter, Charlotte and a serious illness which afflicted his wife.

‘Miscellanies’, published in 1743, included the novel ‘Jonathan Wild’, a mock biography of a criminal hero.

The death of his wife in 1744 was a great blow, exasperating his already bad health. He took comfort largely in the company of his daughter Harriet, his sister Sarah, and his wife’s maid, Mary Daniel. Sarah had followed in her fathers literary footsteps and did some writing but none of it was very memorable; however her book for educating girls, ‘The Governess, or Little Female Academy’, was used well into the next century.

It was about a year before Fielding went back to newspaper writing, where he continued to work on various politically oriented newspapers and publish many political and satirical pamphlets, some of which the government actually approved of, and even distributed. These were often published anonymously, which unfortunately led to Henry being blamed for some atrociously mean pamphlets that he had nothing to do with.

In 1747 defying convention Fielding married Mary Macdaniel, who was around six months pregnant with their son William at the time. The following year, Henry was appointed a judge at Middlesex. Over the next few years, Henry’s wife had four more children and Henry himself became increasingly angry with the state of the law and law enforcement.

Perhaps the most important result of his ideas was the reform of the police. It was as a direct consequence of this pamphlet that Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, was to form the Bow Street Runners, Britain’s first professional police force.

Henry was directly responsible for improvements in record keeping, founding what was later to become the Criminal Record Office of Scotland Yard.

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Due to ill health, Henry reigned as a Judge in 1752, he sailed to Lisbon in 1754. Unfortunately he had contracted jaundice, and this combined with dropsy was to cause his death on 8 October 1754 just two months after his arrival in Portugal.

Published after his death, his final work, Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, has been described as a classic example of the horrors of traveling.

Samuel Richardson. Samuel Richardson was born in Derbyshire in 1689, the son of a London joiner (a kind of skilled workman who makes the wooden fittings of a building, e.g. window frames and doors). He received little formal education, although his family had hoped that he would become a priest. Due to the lack of means, in 1707 he was apprenticed to a printer in London. Thirteen years later he set up his own shop as a stationer and printer and became one of the leading figures in the London trade.

As a printer his output included political writing, such as the Tory periodical The True Britain, the newspapers Daily Journal (1736–1737) and Daily Gazeteer (1738), together with twenty-six volumes of the Journals of the House of Commons and general law printing. Richardson had married his employer’s daughter, Martha Wilde, and they had six children. Sadly, she and all their children died. He married again, and had six children with Elizabeth Leake, and although two of them also died of childhood illness, four survived.

Richardson’s literary career began after he was in his fifties and wellestablished as a printer, when two booksellers proposed that he should compile a volume of model letters for unskilled letter writers. While preparing this, Richardson became fascinated by the project, and a small sequence of letters from a daughter in service, asking her father’s advice when threatened by her master’s advances, formed the germ of Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740–1741). Pamela was a huge sucess and became something of a cult novel. By May 1741 it reached a fourth edition and was dramatized in Italy by Goldoni, as well as in England.

Richardson’s other most popular work, also regarded today as his best work, is Clarissa or, the History of a Young Lady, published in 1747–1748. This novel is a tragic story of a girl who runs off with her seducer, but is later abandoned.

Richardson’s novels were enormously popular in their day. Although he has been accused of being a verbose and sentimental storyteller, his emphasis on detail, his psychological insights into women, and his dramatic technique have earned him a prominent place among English novelists. His last

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novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison, appeared in 1753–1754. Richardson received great fame for his writing and had many admirers. He died in 1761, and is buried in St. Bride’s Church, London.

Age of sensibility (1750–1798). This period is also sometimes described as the “Age of Johnson.”

Samuel Johnson. Johnson was born in Lichfield, England, on September 18, 1709; his father Michael was a bookseller. Johnson was not a healthy infant, and there was considerable question as to whether he would survive: he was baptized almost immediately. Johnson was scarred from scrofula, and suffered a loss of hearing and was blind in one eye, thanks largely to nursing from a tubercular nursemaid. During his toddler years, he had an open “issue” in his arm, to drain fluids. Stop for a moment, and think about a small child being singled out in this way, and what it must have meant.

In spite of these infirmities, there are early tales of his independence. Once, when his babysitter failed to pick him up on time from nursery school, Johnson decided he would get home on his own, crawling on all fours in order to see the gutter and avoid falling in. The babysitter followed at some distance, but when Johnson saw her watching, protested against her following him, vehemently.

The availability of the books in his father’s shop, and his natural proclivity for learning, contributed to his having extensive knowledge at an early age. When Johnson spent time with an elder cousin, he was exposed to a broad range of thinking and cultivation, of the sort he wouldn’t have ordinarily seen in Lichfield. He later attended Oxford for about a year, but left for financial reasons. His poverty at Oxford was noticed by another student, who left a pair of new shoes outside Johnson’s door during the night; while Johnson’s poverty was itself humiliating, the fact that another would notice and make Johnson a beneficiary of charity enraged him.

So Johnson had to leave Oxford; it must have been a horrible disappointment to someone who was so learned, to leave for financial reasons, and see his academic inferiors succeed in an arena where he couldn’t. During this period he went into a severe depression; his friend Edmund Hector helped him remain productive, in spite of the depression.

In 1735, Johnson married Elizabeth “Tetty” Porter, a woman several years older than him: she was 46, and he 25.

As a young man, Johnson tried his hand at a career as a schoolmaster, and was unsuccessful – largely because he didn’t have a degree. To some extent, his ungainly appearance, twitches, and mannerisms made it difficult

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to maintain the respect of his students. He eventually (1737) went to London to seek his fortune, and found employment as a writer for various periodicals. In addition to writing book reviews and derivative biographies, at one point he was assigned the task of writing thinly disguised reports of the debates in Parliament.

Johnson obtained some notice with his works London (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) – both of which are considered great poems – but his efforts in the 1750’s are part of why he’s considered a titan. This decade saw the creation of his Dictionary (1755), his Rambler essays (1750–1752), his Idler essays (1758–1760), and Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759). This was a trying decade for him: his wife died in 1752 (just after the cessation of the Rambler essays), and she was often on his mind.

Johnson’s output included far more than just his output of the 1750’s, of course. It also includes a complete edition of Shakespeare; a number of frequently cited political tracts; sermons; a description of his 1773 tour to Scotland with Boswell, with considerable discussion of the change of an era; and a series of biographies of numerous British poets (The Lives of the Poets), commissioned to accompany reprints of each poet’s works. Johnson died on December 13, 1784.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 established a rule of law, and the Act of Union of 1707, a political alliance, under which England was transformed into Great Britain in fact as well as name – a large country to which people of widely differing backgrounds and origins felt they owed allegiance.

Many scholars think of it as properly three discrete literary eras: the Restoration (1660–1700), dominated by Dryden; the Age of Satire (1700– 1745), dominated by Swift and Pope; and the Age of Johnson (1745–1790), dominated not only by Johnson but by a new kind of poetry and a major new literary form, the novel. n the era of the Restoration, Dryden’s occasional verse, comedy, blank verse tragedy, heroic play, ode, satire, translation, and critical essay and both his example and his precepts had great influence. In the Age of Satire, the literature is chiefly a literature of wit, concerned with civilization and social relationships, and consequently, it is critical and in some degree moral or satiric. Some of the finest works of this period are mock heroic or humorous burlesques of serious classic or modern modes.

A morbid fascination with death, suicide, and the grave preoccupies the poets of mid-century. In the typical Gothic romance, set amid the glooms and intricacies of a medireview castle, the laws of nightmare replace the

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laws of probability. Forbidden themes – incest, murder, necrophilia, atheism, and the torments of sexual desire – are allowed free play; repressed feelings, morbid fears rise to the surface of the narrative. The modern novel came into existence in this century. To a large extent, the development of the novel is identical with the attempt to interest the growing number of female readers by shaping their lives into literature.

§ 15. Medicine in the 18th century.

Knowledge of anatomy greatly improved in the 18th century. The famous 18th century surgeon John Hunter (1728–1793) is sometimes called the Father of Modern Surgery. He invented new procedures such as tracheotomy.

Among other advances a Scottish surgeon named James Lind discovered that fresh fruit or lemon juice could cure or prevent scurvy. He published his findings in 1753.

A major scourge of the 18th century was smallpox. Even if it did not kill you it could leave you scarred with pox marks. Then, in 1721 Lady Mary Wortley Montague introduced inoculation from Turkey. You cut the patient then introduced matter from a smallpox pustule into the wound. The patient would (hopefully!) develop a mild case of the disease and be immune in future.

Then, in 1796 a doctor named Edward Jenner (1749–1823) realised that milkmaids who caught cowpox were immune to smallpox. He invented vaccination. The patient was cut then matter from a cowpox pustule was introduced. The patient gained immunity to smallpox.

In 1700 many people believed that scrofula (a form of tubercular infection) could be healed by a monarch’s touch. (Scrofula was called the kings evil). Queen Anne (1702–1714) was the last British monarch to touch for scrofula. However there were still many quacks in the 18th century. Limited medical knowledge meant many people were desperate for a cure. One of the most common treatments, for the wealthy, was bathing in or drinking spa water, which they believed could cure all kinds of illness.

§ 16. Transport in the 18th century.

Transport was greatly improved during the 18th century. Groups of rich men formed turnpike trusts. Acts of Parliament gave them the right to improve and maintain certain roads. Travelers had to pay tolls to use them.

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The first turnpikes were created as early as 1663 but they became far more common in the 18th century.

Transporting goods was also made much easier by digging canals. In the early 18th century goods were often transported by pack horse. Moving heavy goods was very expensive. However in 1759 the Duke of Bridgewater decided to build a canal to bring coal from his estate at Worsley to Manchester. He employed an engineer called James Brindley. When it was completed the Bridgewater canal halved the price of coal in Manchester. Many more canals were dug in the late 18th century and the early 19th century. They played a major role in the industrial revolution by making it cheaper to transport goods.

Travel in the 18th century was made dangerous by highwaymen. The most famous is Dick Turpin (1705–1739). Originally a butcher Turpin does not deserve his romantic reputation. In reality he was a cruel and brutal man. Like many of his fellow highwaymen he was hanged.

Smuggling was also very common in the 18th century. It could be very profitable as import duties on goods like rum and tobacco were very high.

§ 17. Education in the 18th century.

In the early 18th century charity schools were founded in many towns in England. They were sometimes called Blue Coat Schools because of the colour of the children’s uniforms.

Boys from well off families went to grammar schools. Girls from well off families also went to school but it was felt important for them to learn ‘accomplishments’ like embroidery and music rather than academic subjects.

However non-comformists or dissenters (Protestants who did not belong to the Church of England) were not allowed to attend most public schools. Instead they went to their own dissenting academies.

§ 18. Leisure in the 18th century.

Traditional games remained popular in the 18th century. These included games such as chess, draughts and backgammon. They also tennis and a rough version of football.

It is believed dominoes was invented in China. It reached Europe in the 18th century.

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