Joseph Hone – författare

Literature and Party Politics at the Accession of Queen Anne is the first detailed study of the final Stuart succession crisis. It demonstrates for the first time the centrality of debates about royal succession to the literature and political culture of the early eighteenth century. Using previously neglected, misunderstood, and newly discovered material, Joseph Hone shows that arguments about Anne's right to the throne were crucial to the construction of nascent party political identities. Literary texts were the principal vehicle through which contemporaries debated the new queen's legitimacy. This book sheds fresh light on canonical authors such as Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, and Joseph Addison by setting their writing alongside the work of lesser known but nonetheless important figures such as John Tutchin, William Pittis, Nahum Tate, John Dennis, Henry Sacheverell, Charles Leslie, and other anonymous and pseudonymous authors. Through close historical analysis, it shows how this new generation of poets, preachers, and pamphleteers transformed older models of succession writing by Milton, Dryden, and others, and imbued conventional genres such as panegyric and satire with their own distinctive poetics. By immersing the major authors in their milieu, and reconstructing the political and material contexts in which those authors wrote, Literature and Party Politics demonstrates the vitality of debates about royal succession in early eighteenth-century culture.

How did Alexander Pope become the greatest poet of the eighteenth century? Modern scholarship has typically taken Pope's rise to greatness and subsequent remoteness from lesser authors for granted. As a major poet he is treated as the successor of Milton and Dryden or the precursor of Wordsworth. Drawing on previously neglected texts and overlooked archival materials, Alexander Pope in the Making immerses the poet in his milieux, providing a substantial new account of Pope's early career, from the earliest traces of manuscript circulation to the publication of his collected Works and beyond.In this book, Joseph Hone illuminates classic poems such as An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock, and Windsor-Forest by setting them alongside lesser-known texts by Pope and his contempories, many of which have never received sustained critical attention before. Pope's earliest experiments in satire, panegyric, lyric, pastoral, and epic are all explored alongside his translations, publication strategies, and neglected editorial projects. By recovering values shared by Pope and the politically heterodox men and women whose works he read and with whom he collaborated, this book constructs powerful new interpretive frameworks for some of the eighteenth century's most celebrated poems.Alexander Pope in the Making mounts a comprehensive challenge to the 'Scriblerian' paradigm that has dominated scholarship for the past eighty years. It sheds fresh light on Pope's early career and reshapes our understanding of the ideological landscape of his era. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of eighteenth-century literature, history, and politics.

'Joseph Hone went to Zaire for the BBC. His aim was a series of talks about crossing Africa from coast to coast, as Stanley had done. That intention began, and ended, in Kinshasha... Having fallen in love in boyhood with the idea of Africa, he had looked for 'great liberating spaces', and found himself in a city from which there was no escape without a private plane.' Guardian'For those who like to read, in comfort, about uncomfortable journeys, frightful hotels, dreadful meals, and broken-down capitals, I strongly recommend Children of the Country. The section on Kinshasha, in particular, is both alarming and hilarious.' Richard Cobb, Spectactor 'Books of the Year''A darkly coloured personal odyssey.... Hone hopes to achieve some kind of perspective on his unraveling marriage here in the landscape of his boyhood fantasies... His ability to articulate his own reactions to the landscape, combined with his precise notation of detail, lend his narrative freshness and vitality.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Joseph Hone's The Paris Trap, first published in 1977, saw him step aside from his sequence of 'Peter Marlow' novels to offer a different kind of political thriller.Jim Hackett and Harry Tyson first met in Paris, in days of hope - Hackett a promising actor, Tyson a budding writer. Twenty years later, their dreams soured, they are reunited in Paris for a substantive project: Hackett, now a movie actor, has been cast in a major film derived from a spy novel authored by Tyson, who now works for British intelligence. But the plot of the film, concerning a Palestinian terrorist cell, is about to be overtaken in the dramatic stakes by real events.'A fine example of a vastly popular genre - the thinking man's thriller.' Irish Times'Through a distorting filter of betrayals, private and public, Joseph Hone conducts us to a final scene so dire that Hamlet by comparison leaves the stage tidy.' Guardian

A major reinterpretation of the English Enlightenment that reveals how its radical ideas were shaped by a thriving literary undergroundIn early eighteenth-century England, books could be deadly, and dangerous ideas had to circulate in secret. Even though pre-publication licensing had ended in 1695, the book trade remained subject to government surveillance and harassment. Those caught producing seditious, blasphemous, or treasonous works risked beatings, prison, fines, and even death. Yet, despite such intense censorship, clandestine networks of daring and ingenious authors, printers, and booksellers enabled political debates, religious controversies, and literary experiments to flourish. In Unlicensed, Joseph Hone takes readers behind the scenes of this remarkable literary underground, following texts from manuscript to sale—through false imprints, hidden presses, and cross-border smuggling routes—and showing how censorship shaped the culture of enlightenment England.Drawing on extraordinary evidence, including informant reports, interrogation transcripts, and forensic bibliographical analysis, Unlicensed offers a vivid panoramic account of the early eighteenth-century underground book trade, and uncovers how illicit books were produced, disguised, distributed, and read. Printers emerge as active agents shaping which works reached the reading public, while back-alley distributors, booksellers, and even criminal gangs ensured that forbidden books circulated widely. At the same time, anonymous and illicit texts cultivated a discerning, skeptical readership attuned to questions of attribution and authority.By mapping the interactions between authors, printers, publishers, booksellers, readers, spies, and government enforcers, Unlicensed demonstrates that censorship was not merely a constraint but a formative force in the early eighteenth-century English literary world. The result is a fresh perspective on enlightenment England, revealing how law, commerce, and society together shaped the circulation of ideas and the cultures of writing and reading.

Jonathan Swift remains the most important and influential satirist in the English language. The author of Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Tale of a Tub, in addition to vast numbers of political pamphlets, satirical verses, sermons, and other kinds of text, Swift is one of the most versatile writers in the literary canon. His writings were always closely intertwined with the English and Irish worlds in which he lived. The forty-four essays collected in Jonathan Swift in Context advance the latest research on Swift in a way that will engage undergraduate students while also remaining useful for scholars. Reflecting the best of current and ongoing scholarship, the contextual approach advanced by this volume will help to make Swift's works even more powerful and resonant to modern audiences.

Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown'A remarkable achievement' SpectatorIn the summer of 1705, a masked woman knocked on the door of a London printer's workshop. She did not leave her name, only a package and the promise of protection. Soon after, an anonymous pamphlet was quietly distributed in the backstreets of the city. Entitled The Memorial of the Church of England, the argument it proposed threatened to topple the government. Fearing insurrection, parliament was in turmoil and government minister Robert Harley launched a hunt for all of those involved. The printer was eventually named, but could not be found... In this breakneck political adventure, Joseph Hone shows us a nation in crisis through the story of a single incendiary document.'An elegant blend of scholarship and detection' Peter Moore, author of Endeavour'Enthralling' London Review of Books'An exciting story told with vigour' Adrian Tinniswood, Literary Review

‘A page-turner about page-turners’ Janice Hallett‘The perfect piece of armchair detection’ Ruth Ware‘Hugely entertaining and unexpectedly gripping’ London Review of BooksA true detective story from the age of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers: the literary crime that fooled the world - and the daring young booksellers who uncovered itLondon, 1932. Thomas James Wise is the toast of the literary establishment. A prominent collector and businessman, with friends in high places, he is one of the most powerful men in the field of rare books.One night, two young booksellers stumble upon a strange discrepancy leading them to suspect Wise and his books are not all they seem. Inspired by the vogue for Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the pair harness the latest developments in forensic analysis to crack the case. By the time they are done, their investigation will have rocked the book world to its core.‘A thrilling unravelling of bookish fraud that reads like a detective story from the golden age’ Roland Philipps, author of A Spy Named Orphan‘Hone is a lively and fluent writer, ratcheting up the temperature with snappy sentences and chapters ending on cliffhangers’ Sunday Telegraph

'Absolutely fascinating . . . A must-read for anyone enthralled by the value and integrity of books' Janice Hallett, author of The Alperton Angels'Hugely entertaining . . . a propulsive if unlikely thriller, whose plot hinges on typographical minutiae and sherry parties' LRBA true detective story from the age of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers: the literary crime that fooled the world - and the daring young booksellers who uncovered itLondon, 1932. Thomas James Wise is the toast of the literary establishment. A prominent collector and businessman, he is renowned on both sides of the Atlantic for unearthing the most stunning first editions and bringing them to market. Pompous and fearsome, with friends in high places, he is one of the most powerful men in the field of rare books.One night, two young booksellers - one a dishevelled former communist, the other a martini-swilling fan of detective stories - stumble upon a strange discrepancy. It will lead them to suspect Wise and his books are not all they seem. Inspired by the vogue for Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the pair harness the latest developments in forensic analysis to crack the case, but find its extent is greater than they ever could have imagined. By the time they are done, their investigation will have rocked the book world to its core.This is the true story of unlikely friends coming together to expose the literary crime of the century, and of a maverick bibliophile who forged not only books but an entire life, erasing his past along the way.'The perfect piece of armchair detection' Ruth Ware, author of The Woman in Cabin 10‘Thrilling . . . reads like a detective story from the golden age’ Roland Philipps, author of A SPY NAMED ORPHAN'A great story that is truly stranger than fiction' Martin Edwards, President of the Detection Club