In recent years the scope of eighteenth-century poetry has greatly expanded beyond the established canon of Pope, Swift, Gray, Johnson, Goldsmith, Smart and Cowper, to include women poets, labouring-class and provincial poets, and many previously unheard voices. Fairer's book takes up the challenge this poses to our traditional understanding of the subject. He seeks to question some of the structures, categories, and labels that have given the age its reassuring shape in literary history. In doing so he offers a fresh and detailed look at a wide range of material. This book sets out to integrate the works of lesser known (even 'unknown') poets into the bigger picture by engaging them with the established writers. It tests general assumptions by emphasising variety and the individual voice, and by placing poems in their immediate contexts. The result is an eighteenth-century poetic scene that is dynamic, full of human energies, and responsive to all the significant developments of the age.David Fairer is Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Leeds.
He is the author of 'The Poetry of Alexander Pope' (1989) and 'Pope's Imagination' (1984), and co-editor of 'Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology' (Blackwell, 1999).
