THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
     
    Dr. Marguerite Connor 
     
    The Age of Satire The Essay The Novel 
    Poetry and Plays "Sensibility" 

    There are two distinctive periods in the literary styles and tastes of the 18th century.  The first half of the century is  ruled by the great satirists, the second half by the marked development and popularization of the new form of literature, the novel. 
    •  The Age of Satire -
    Philosophers call the 18th century "The Age of Reason," for people believed that through Reason, Man could reach perfection.  If Man could, his world could as well, and for this reason satire (literary work in which vice and folly are held up to ridicule in an attempt to bring about change) becomes one of the dominant literary styles.  Wit remained highly valued, as well, so the best writers of this period combined satire with biting wit.  The leading writers of this time are: 
    Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, John Arbuthnot, Delarivier Manley, John Gay (playwright), Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding 

    This age lasted from around 1704 until roughly 1744-45, the years Swift and Pope died. 
     
    Jonathan Swift
    Trinity College, Dublin
    Alexander Pope
    Leeds City Art Galleries
    Sir Robert Walpole 1738
    National Portrait Gallery
    from The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century  Martin Price.  NY: Oxford UP, 1973 
     

    • The Essay - 
    Essays became popular reading in this century.  People read to improve their Reason, and the "Reasoned"  form of the essay appealed to them.  After the major essayists of the beginning of the century stopped writing (Swift, Addison, Steele, Defoe, Manley), they were replaced by Samuel Johnson, considered the greatest essayist of the day, and  his follower, Joseph Boswell.  Many other writers were working, of course, but these are the major names. 
     
     
    • The Novel -
    "In 1791 the bookseller James Lackington commented: "There are some thousands of women who frequent my shop, that know as well what books to choose, and are as well acquainted with works of taste and genius, as any gentleman in the kingdom, notwithstanding they sneer against novel readers" (Jane Austin in Style. Susan Watkins.  Thames and Hudson: 1990 18)    		  
    18th century London bookstore (Watkins 19)
     
    Aphra Behn, from 
    Reconstructing Aphra.  Angeline Goreau.  NY: Dial, 1980.
    		 The novel form was actually being developed in England as early as the 1680s by writers like Aphra Behn, but in the beginning of the 18th century we see a huge leap in its development. 
     

    Major names here are: 
     Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Delarivier Manley, Laurence Stern, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Sarah Fielding (brother and sister), Maria Edgeworth, Eliza Haywood, Mary Hays, Mary Davis. 

    Yes, women predominate the list, for this was a way that women could write without a need for great learning (they were barred from higher education for the most part).  Also, women made up a large part of the novel's audience, so it makes sense for women to be writing the novel.
     
    • Poetry and Plays - 
    After the end of the Restoration period (around 1714, when the last Stuart monarch, Anne, died and the German ruling family, the Hanovers, took over in the form of George I), the stage in England becomes a pretty dismal place, and for the most part remains that way until the late 19th century.  Plays were no longer a major literary form.  After the death of  Pope and Swift, poetry is no longer the preferred form and the prose works of this period are much stronger.  But there are a few important names: 

    Oliver Goldsmith (poems and plays), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (plays), Thomas Gray, William Collins, Christopher Smart, William Cowper 

    "Sensibility" - This trend begins in the beginning of the 18th century and develops through the century until it became so exaggerated that Jane Austen mildly satirizes it in her novel Sense and Sensibility (1811).  What is it?  Reduced to very simple terms, it is a reliance on feeling, on emotion, and is often linked with "sentimental" writing, which is characterized by its high moral tone and its faith in the triumph of good over evil. 
     

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