Introduction to the Eighteenth Century

The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (1660-1785)

 General Introduction

 Historical Background

The England to which Charles Stuart returned in 1660 was a nation divided against itself, exhausted by twenty years of civil wars and revolution. Early in Charles's reign, the people were visited by two frightful calamities that seemed to the superstitious to be the work of a divine Providence outraged by rebellion and regicide: the plague of 1665, carried off over seventy thousand souls in London alone, and in September 1666, a fire that raged for four days destroyed a large part of the City (more than thirteen thousand houses), leaving about two-thirds of the population homeless. Yet the nation rose from its ashes, in the century that followed, to become an empire. The Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 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 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.

Text Source: http://www.liu.se/isk/eng/cs/cs2home5.html#Art

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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

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

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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. 

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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.

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Poetry and Plays

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

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"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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