Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter
Author: Cynthia J. Lowenthal
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0820336939

This is is the first critical study of one of the most important women writers of the early eighteenth century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), who produced a body of erudite and entertaining correspondence that spanned more than fifty years. Lady Mary's letters illuminate the difficulties encountered by a sensitive, intelligent, and gifted woman writer living through an era of significant cultural change. These letters display the tensions inherent in the competing demands of public and private life, revealing Lady Mary's own discomfort about the problems of authorship and authority in an age that held publication to be an improper activity for respectable women. Through the discourse of supposedly “private” letters, Lady Mary was able to find an avenue for her talents that brought her “public” stature without violating the imperatives of her position as a woman and an aristocrat. Cynthia Lowenthal argues persuasively that Lady Mary's letters, themselves central to the establishment of the familiar letter as an important eighteenthcentury genre, were self-consciously constructed as literary artifacts and crafted as part of a larger female epistolary tradition. Moreover, Lowenthal contends, the works of Lady Mary are essential to the feminist recuperation of women's writing precisely because she provided an aristocratic critique—a voice often ignored—of the class and gender codes of her day.

Selected Writings of an Eighteenth-Century Venetian Woman of Letters

Selected Writings of an Eighteenth-Century Venetian Woman of Letters
Author: Elisabetta Caminer Turra
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0226817695

Elisabetta Caminer Turra (1751-96) was one of the most prominent women in eighteenth-century Italy and a central figure in the international "Republic of Letters." A journalist and publisher, Caminer participated in important debates on capital punishment, freedom of the press, and the abuse of clerical power. She also helped spread Enlightenment ideas into Italy by promoting and publishing Voltaire's latest works and translating new European plays-plays she herself directed, to great applause, on Venetian stages. Bringing together Caminer's letters, poems, and journalistic writings, nearly all published for the first time here, Selected Writings offers readers an intellectual biography of this remarkable figure as well as a glimpse into her intimate correspondence with the most prominent thinkers of her day. But more important, Selected Writings provides insight into the passion that animated Caminer's fervent reflections on the complex and shifting condition of women in her society-the same passion that pushed her to succeed in the male-dominated literary professions.

Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture

Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture
Author: Clare Brant
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006-04-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780230249080

This important new book explores epistolary forms and practices in relation to important areas of British culture. Familiar ideas about epistolary fiction and personal correspondence, and public and private, are re-examined in the light of alternative paradigms, showing how the letter is a genre at the centre of Eighteenth-century life.

An Eighteenth-Century Correspondence

An Eighteenth-Century Correspondence
Author: Lilian Dickins
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2018-04-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781334323065

Excerpt from An Eighteenth-Century Correspondence: Being the Letters of Deane Swift, Pitt, the Lytteltons and the Grenvilles, Lord Dacre, Robert Nugent, Charles Jenkinson, the Earls of Guilford, Coventry, and Hardwicke, Sir Edward Turner, Mr. Talbot of Lacock, and Others to Sanderson Miller From the quaint octagon room in this tower you can survey the whole field and fight that undecisive battle over again, marvelling at the rashness of Prince Rupert, whose fiery counsels persuaded the King to leave his lofty post of vantage and descend those pre cipitous slopes to try conclusions with his enemy on the plain below. But few that look out over that lovely vale - one of the most beautiful views of our mid-england - know that they are on ground which is associated with men who helped to make England's history long after the days of Roundhead and Cavalier. Here came Pitt - the Great Commoner-the Grenvilles, and the Lytteltons, while Lord North was constantly bringing distinguished guests from his neighbouring house at Wroxton to admire the prospect and to picnic at the tower. For all these men were the personal friends of the man who built it-sanderson Miller of Radway Grange - man of letters, antiquarian, and architect. A hundred and sixty years ago his tower was generally regarded with profound admiration, and persons of taste looked up to its designer as to one of the greatest authorities on Gothic architecture in the kingdom, while his taste in the classical orders was not less esteemed. He built many Gothic castles (so called) beside his own, and made alterations and additions to and designed houses in the Gothick Taste for many of his friends; while Hagley Hall and the admirable County Hall at Warwick still bear witness to the really excellent work he achieved in classic architecture. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Eighteenth Century Letters

Eighteenth Century Letters
Author: R. Brimley Johnson
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2015-06-24
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781330149867

Excerpt from Eighteenth Century Letters The voluminous and interesting correspondence of the Eighteenth Century - when letter-writing was indeed an art - can only be read at present in more or less elaborate and expensive complete editions, or in small anthologies containing at most half-a-dozen letters by the same writer. The aim of the present series is to present a selection of this inexhaustible material in groups, each sufficiently large to create an atmosphere. No attempt has been made to seek out one-letter men, or to unearth a neglected genius; but the leaders of thought arid action - in so far as they wrote good letters - are represented by their most characteristic work, collected from all authentic sources. The choice of particular letters has been governed by literary rather than historical or even biographical considerations; and each volume should be readable and complete in itself; illustrative at once of style and manners. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In Search of the Supernatural

In Search of the Supernatural
Author: Bao Gan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 1996-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0804764719

"This is the first complete translation into a Western language of Sou-shen Chi, a fourth-century Chinese collection of 464 extraordinary, fantastic, or bizarre items. The subjects of these brief anecdotes and narratives include natural curiosities, gods, religious figures, omens, dreams, divinations, miracles, monsters, strange animals, demons, ghosts, and exorcists. The stories range from sober reports of drought and misfortune to accounts of a fox transformed into a turtle, persons whose heads could take independent flight at night, a tryst in a tomb, and the marriages of humans with spirits." "Sou-shen Chi is the oldest, richest, and most consulted example of the chi-kuai genre, an important division of classical Chinese literature demonstrating features of narrative technique and ethereal sensibility that point to chi-kuai as the earliest examples of Chinese fiction. Of the three surviving versions of Sou-shen Chi, the 20-chapter edition translated here is widely accepted as the best representation of the work of its compiler, Kan Pao, the official court historian for Emperor Yuan of the Chin dynasty. The style of the writing is terse, almost austere, and it has qualities of documentary prose, a reflection of its common ancestry with historical writing. An introduction deals with the text and its background, authorship, contents, versions, and transmission." "Sou-shen Chi served as a model for subsequent collections and provided many basic plots, characters, and situations for plays, novels, and even poetry. The stories were widely known and became part of the body of allusions that literate Chinese knew and used in their own writings. For example, in the twentieth century Lu Xun retold, in extended fashion, a tale of magic swords that comes from Sou-shen Chi."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Atlantic Families

Atlantic Families
Author: Sarah Pearsall
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2008-11-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191559792

The Atlantic represented a world of opportunity in the eighteenth century, but it represented division also, separating families across its coasts. Whether due to economic shifts, changing political landscapes, imperial ambitions, or even simply personal tragedy, many families found themselves fractured and disoriented by the growth and later fissure of a larger Atlantic world. Such dislocation posed considerable challenges to all individuals who viewed orderly family relations as both a general and a personal ideal. The more fortunate individuals who thus found themselves 'all at sea' were able to use family letters, with attendant emphases on familiarity, sensibility, and credit, in order to remain connected in times and places of considerable disconnection. Portraying the family as a unified, affectionate, and happy entity in such letters provided a means of surmounting concerns about societies fractured by physical distance, global wars, and increasing social stratification. It could also provide social and economic leverage to individual men and women in certain circumstances. Sarah Pearsall explores the lives and letters of these families, revealing the sometimes shocking stories of those divided by sea. Ranging across the Anglophone Atlantic, including mainland American colonies and states, Britain, and the British Caribbean, Pearsall argues that it was this expanding Atlantic world, much more than the American Revolution, that reshaped contemporary ideals about families, as much as families themselves reshaped the transatlantic world.