The Production of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain

TitleThe Production of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Publication TypeThesis
Year of Publication1994
AuthorsJustice, George Lewis
Number of Pages293 pp.
UniversityUniversity of Pennsylvania
Thesis TypePh.D. Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Abstract

After the Licensing Act was allowed to expire in 1695, the publishing industry first in London and then in the rest of Great Britain expanded rapidly. By the end of the century, "literature" coalesces into a discourse relatively separate from printed matter occupying other marketing and social niches. The dissertation includes an examination of the network of material conditions of authorship and publishing during the century with textual readings in order to explore the mutually constitutive nature of literature, the material forces that influence its production, and the social world of readers.

The introductory chapter begins with the notion of the "bourgeois public sphere" in eighteenth-century London described by the social theorist Jurgen Habermas. Habermas locates in the print culture created, most importantly, by Addison and Steele's Spectator a model for unmediated rational communication within a social body of disinterested individuals. Chapter Two focuses on Daniel Defoe's Review and pamphlets he wrote while spying for the English ministry in Scotland during the debate over the Union. The chapter concludes with Defoe's Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain of the 1720s, which attempts to translate argument into literature. Chapter Three examines Pope's Epistle to Arbuthnot and Johnson's Life of Savage in the context of the material conditions of authorship and the emergence of literary biography. Chapter Four concerns Robert Dodsley's Collection of Poems by Several Hands. In its various editions, Dodsley's Collection reflects the construction of a notion of literary value. Chapters Five and Six both analyze Frances Burney in the print culture of the second half of the eighteenth century. Chapter Five embeds the "rise of the novel" in the publishing industry with a reading of Burney's first novel, Evelina. The last chapter focuses on Burney's authorship of her third novel Camilla in order to demonstrate that Burney's unique social position and literary skills enable her to create a modern literary authorship.

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