First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In recent years the canon of eighteenth-century poetry has greatly expanded to include women poets, labouring-class and provincial poets, and many previously unheard voices. Fairer's book takes up the challenge this ought to pose to our traditional understanding of the subject. This book seeks to question some of the structures, categories, and labels that have given the age its reassuring shape in literary history. In doing so Fairer offers a fresh and detailed look at a wide range of material.

Covent Garden, January 1708. Widow Trotter has big plans for her recently-inherited coffee house, not suspecting that within days her little kingdom will be caught up in a national drama involving scandal, conspiracy and murder... Queen Anne's new "Great Britain" is in crisis. The Queen is mired in a sexual scandal, spies are everywhere, and political disputes are bringing violence and division. The treasonous satirist "Bufo" is public enemy number one and the Ministry is determined to silence him. Drawn into a web of intrigue that reaches from the brothels of Drury Lane to the Court of St James's, Mary Trotter and her young friends Tom and Will race against time to unravel the political plots, solve two murders, and prevent another. The first in a projected series of "Chocolate House Mysteries", the novel presents the London of Queen Anne in all its brilliance and filth, its violence, elegance and wit. The book moves among a rich cast of characters, ranging from the life of the streets and the "nymphs" of Drury Lane to the conspiratorial world of Queen Anne's Court. At its heart is the Bay-Tree Chocolate House, Covent Garden, where Widow Trotter presides as she does over the novel itself, with good humour, fierce integrity, and resolute determination.

Poets of labouring class origin were published in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some were popular and important in their day but few are available today. This is a collection of some of those poems from the 18th century.

Poets of labouring class origin were published in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some were popular and important in their day but few are available today. This is a collection of some of those poems from the 18th century.

Poets of labouring class origin were published in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some were popular and important in their day but few are available today. This is a collection of some of those poems from the 18th century.

This set publishes two of the most influential critical works of the eighteenth century together for the first time. Richard Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance and the second (enlarged) edition of Thomas Warton's Observations on the Fairy Queen appeared within a few months of each other in 1762. These two books, which together represented a new 'historical' criticism, established Spenser's Faerie Queene as a 'romantic' poem in the tradition of medieval romance and fictions of chivalry.
With the recent surge of interest in the eighteenth century origins of the literary canon, Hurd and Warton have attracted new critical attention as major figures of the Spenser revival of the time. Fairer's introduction draws on newly discovered material to place the works in their contemporary context. This set will prove an attractive and useful volume for Spenserians and eighteenth century scholars alike.

This rare manuscript, together with additional text by Warton, annotated proof pages, and a comprehensive index is being published in a single edition for the first time.
Thomas Warton's influential history provided the first narrative of English poetry from the Norman Conquest to the early seventeenth century. He left the work unfinished at his death in 1790, with the first three volumes completed, but only a part of the fourth volume printed. These volumes include a valuable introduction by David Fairer which charts the origins, progress, sources and significance of this work, using important new information about Warton's life and writings.

THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE, 24 April 1708. A performance of Macbeth is under way when disaster strikes and the stage becomes a scene of elemental chaos - and for Widow Trotter and her friends at the Bay-Tree Chocolate House, a new adventure begins, involving murder, poison, fire, and a rogue elephant . . . Devoted fans of Chocolate House Treason will welcome this second novel in the Chocolate House Mysteries series, which captures all the energies of the early eighteenth-century theatre. We move among the eccentric characters of the Theatre Royal company, in Drury Lane and at the exuberant May Fair where the actors moonlight in the fairground booths. The puritanical reformers are determined to close the theatre and abolish the Fair, and 'accidents' begin to happen - but Mary Trotter and her friends at the Bay-Tree are determined to expose the conspiracy, and the action reaches its climax at the Fair when the players are faced with the ultimate act of terror. Once again, David Fairer offers the delights of the classic eighteenth-century novel, intricately weaving a murder mystery with authentic history, and bringing the London of Queen Anne to life.

Captain Hazard's Game, third in the Chocolate House Mysteries series, conjures up the vibrant life of early eighteenth-century gamesters and money-men, a world of deception where risk could bring huge rewards - especially when you turned the stock-market by false news or shortened the odds by cheating. It was a scene where all was in hazard and life lived on the edge. The book weaves its classic murder mystery around actual events of October 1708, and we move among a rich cast of characters, both in Vandernan's gaming-house, Covent Garden, and the notorious Exchange Alley. Playing Captain Hazard's Game brings murder and scandal uncomfortably close, and Widow Trotter and her friends at the Bay-Tree are drawn into a frenzied game of chance and speculation at a time when the market was unregulated. Fortunes were made overnight, and ruin could descend in a single hour. People played for the highest stakes, and men of power manipulated things for their own ends. In this book the chocolate house itself comes under threat as Mary Trotter, with help from her young friends Tom and Will, struggles to find the truth behind an ingenious system of deception. Once again, she presides over the novel, as she does over the Bay-Tree, with good humour, fierce integrity, and resolute determination.

Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Rise of the Novel Reconsidered begins with the brute fact that poetry jostled up alongside novels in the bookstalls of eighteenth-century England. Indeed, by exploring unexpected collisions and collusions between poetry and novels, this volume of exciting, new essays offers a reconsideration of the literary and cultural history of the period. The novel poached from and featured poetry, and the "modern" subjects and objects privileged by "rise of the novel" scholarship are only one part of a world full of animate things and people with indistinct boundaries. Contributors: Margaret Doody, David Fairer, Sophie Gee, Heather Keenleyside, Shelley King, Christina Lupton, Kate Parker, Natalie Phillips, Aran Ruth, Wolfram Schmidgen, Joshua Swidzinski, and Courtney Weiss Smith.

In this revisionary study of the poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth and their friends during the 'revolutionary decade' David Fairer questions the accepted literary history of the period and the critical vocabulary we use to discuss it. The book examines why, at a time of radical upheaval when continuities of all kinds (personal, political, social, and cultural) were being challenged, this group of poets explored themes of inheritance, retrospect, revisiting, and recovery. Organising Poetry charts their struggles to find meaning not through vision and symbol but from connection and dialogue. By placing these poets in the context of an eighteenth-century 'organic' tradition, Fairer moves the emphasis away from the language of idealist 'Romantic' theory towards an empirical stress on how identities are developed and sustained through time. Locke's concept of personal identity as a continued organisation 'partaking of one common life' offered not only a model for a reformed British constitution but a way of thinking about the self, art and friendship, which these poets found valuable. The key term, therefore, is not 'unity' but 'integrity'. In this context of a need to sustain and organise diversity and give it meaning, the book offers original readings of some well known poems of the 1790s, including Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' and 'The Ruined Cottage', and Coleridge's conversation poems 'The Eolian Harp', 'This Lime-Tree Bower', and 'Frost at Midnight'. Organising Poetry represents an important contribution to current critical debates about the nature of poetic creativity during this period and the need to recognise its more communal and collaborative aspects.