Christine Gerrard – författare

What did it mean to be a `Patriot' during the Walpole administration? This is the first full-length study of the so-called Patriot opposition to Walpole which reached its height during the clamour for war against Spain at the turn of the 1730s. The book examines the interrelationship between patriotism, politics, and poetry in the period 1724-1742.Christine Gerrard investigates the growing Patriot opposition during the Walpolian oligarchy, and asks whether a broad credo united all of Walpole's political opponents, or whether there was a distinction between Whig and Tory Patriots. The role of Frederick Prince of Wales as the campaign's cultural and political figurehead (Bolingbroke's visionary `Patriot King') is discussed, as are the poetry and drama of such authors as James Thomson, Alexander Pope, and the young Samuel Johnson, who were all drawn to the heady idealism of the young Boy Patriots. Thomson's Rule Britannia and Johnson's London exploit the appeal to British history so central to the emotive propaganda of the Patriot campaign.Drawing on the literature, prints, architecture, and statuary of the 1730s, Christine Gerrard also discusses two of the decade's most powerful romantic patriotic myths - Gothic liberty, and Elizabethan greatness - and reveals that in its nationalistic emphasis upon Nordic and Celtic traditions, the figure of the ancient British Druid, and native `bards', Patriot literature anticipates the `Gothic' strain emerging in the poetry of Gray, Collins, and the Wartons only a few years later.

During his lifetime Aaron Hill was one of the most lively cultural patrons and brokers on the London literary scene - an image hard to square with the company of undistinguished scribblers to which Pope relegated him in the Dunciad. Aaron Hill: The Muses' Projector, 1685-1750, the first biography of this fascinating figure for nearly a century, aims to correct the distorted picture of the Augustan cultural scene which Pope passed down to posterity. Hill deliberately confronted Pope in his attempt to free poetry's sublime and visionary potential from the stale platitudes of neo-classical convention. An early champion of women poets, he also enjoyed close relationships with Eliza Haywood and Martha Fowke, and brought his three writing daughters Urania, Astrea, and Minerva into close contact with his lifelong friend the novelist Samuel Richardson. In 1711 Hill, as stage manager and librettist, introduced Handel to the English stage, as well as lobbying tirelessly for innovation in the eighteenth-century theatre. His entrepreneurial energies, directed at both commercial and cultural projects, mirror the zeitgeist of early Hanoverian Britain.

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was an established master printer when, at the age of 51, he published his first novel, Pamela, and immediately became one of the most influential and admired writers of his time. Not only were all Richardson's novels written in epistolary form: he was also a prolific letter-writer himself. This volume in the first ever full edition of Richardson's correspondence includes his letters to and from Aaron Hill, the poet, dramatist and entrepreneur (1685-1750). Hill was Richardson's earliest literary friend and advisor as he embarked on a new career as a novelist. This correspondence offers fascinating insight into the compositional processes not just of the two Pamela novels, but of Richardson's later novels Clarissa and The History of Sir Charles Grandison. The volume also contains Richardson's correspondence with Hill's three literary daughters, which forms an invaluable chapter in the history of women's writing and literary criticism.

A COMPANION TO & EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY A COMPANION TO & EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRYEdited by Christine Gerrard This wide-ranging Companion reflects the dramatic transformation that has taken place in the study of eighteenth-century poetry over the past two decades. New essays by leading scholars in the field address an expanded poetic canon that now incorporates verse by many women poets and other formerly marginalized poetic voices. The volume engages with topical critical debates such as the production and consumption of literary texts, the constructions of femininity, sentiment and sensibility, enthusiasm, politics and aesthetics, and the growth of imperialism. The Companion opens with a section on contexts, considering eighteenth-century poetry’s relationships with such topics as party politics, religion, science, the visual arts, and the literary marketplace. A series of close readings of specific poems follows, ranging from familiar texts such as Pope’s The Rape of the Lock to slightly less well-known works such as Swift’s “Stella” poems and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Town Eclogues. Essays on forms and genres, and a series of more provocative contributions on significant themes and debates, complete the volume. The Companion gives readers a thorough grounding in both the background and the substance of eighteenth-century poetry, and is designed to be used alongside David Fairer and Christine Gerrard’s Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (3rd edition, 2014).

Currently the definitive text in the field and now available in an expanded third edition, Eighteenth-Century Poetry presents the rich diversity of English poetry from 1700-1800 in authoritative texts and with full scholarly annotation. Balanced to reflect current interests and "favorites" (including prominent poets like Finch, Swift, Pope, Montagu, Johnson, Gray, Burns, and Cowper) as well as  less familiar material, offering a variety of voices and new directions for research and learningIncludes 46 new poems with more texts by women poets and the inclusion of four additional poets (Mary Barber, Mehetabel Wright, Anna Seward, and Mary Robinson); poems reflecting new ecological approaches to 18th-century literature; and poems on the art of writingAccessible and user-friendly, with generous head notes, full foot-of-page annotations, an expanded thematic index, and a visually appealing text design