A Political Biography of Henry Fielding

The most prominent writers of the eighteenth century, such as Swift and Defoe, Addison and Steele, Pope, Gay, Fielding and Johnson, were actively involved in writing pamphlets and periodical essays which were overtly political. Other writers well known in their own day whose literary reputations are beginning to rise once more – such as John Toland, Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood – were also heavily employed in the writing of political polemic. Situating the writings of the period against the background of the lives of the men and women who wrote them, the series provides present-day readers with an unrivalled means of recuperating the meaning of texts from the past. The series has a multi-disciplinary approach, appealing to scholars of History, Political Studies, Political Science, Political Thought, English Literature, Religion and Philosophy in the eighteenth-century period