Urban Enlightenment and the Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essay is the first extensive literary history of the eighteenth-century British periodical essay, and the first to examine the critical reception and canonizing of the genre in a transatlantic context. Drawing on a wide range of early Modern and Enlightenment essays, character writings and critical reviews, it argues that authors on both sides of the Atlantic came to regard the periodical essay as a literary means of transmitting moral-civic wisdom to posterity. As it traces the developments and changes in the genre across the century, this study devotes special attention to important but lesser-read mid-century London serials like the" World" and "Connoisseur," the "Edinburgh Mirror" and "Lounger," and Washington Irving's "Salmagundi." By recovering the conception of literary citizenship that grounds these serials' claims to the notice of posterity, "Urban Enlightenment" gives new insights into the historical character of the Enlightenment literary public sphere.

Urban Enlightenment offers the first literary history of the British periodical essay spanning the entire eighteenth century, and the first to study the genre's development and cultural impact in a transatlantic context.

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