Stephen Copley – författare

In his writings, David Hume set out to bridge the gap between the learned world of the academy and the marketplace of polite society. This collection, drawing largely on his Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1776 edition), which was even more popular than his famous Treatise of Human Nature, comprehensively shows how far he succeeded.From `Of Essay Writing' to `Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences' Hume embraces a staggering range of social, cultural, political, demographic, and historical concerns. With the scope typical of the Scottish Enlightenment, he charts the state of civil society, manners, morals, and taste, and the development of political economy in the mid-eighteenth century. These essays represent not only those areas where Hume's arguments are revealingly typical of his day, but also where he is strikingly innovative in a period already famous for its great thinkers. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Recent scholarship had emphasised the importance of a number of non-literary, economic and social debates to the understanding of Augustan Literature. Debates over the place of land, money, credit and luxury in society, as well as strands of radical thinking, are prominent throughout the period.Originally published in 1984, this anthology of eighteenth century writings about contemporary society is divided into sections on the social order, economics, the poor and crime, with a general introduction identifying some of the dominant social discourses of the period. They reflect the emergence of an embryonic capitalist society, with its challenge to feudal ties, and of a nascent bourgeois class. This collection of writings is not intended to provide material for an empirical historical account of these changes, but to give some idea of the ideological terms in which they are perceived, endorsed or contested by contemporaries; and provide a set of discursive contexts in which the imaginative literature of the period can be read. The texts themselves repay close analysis as the bearers of complex ideological positions and it is interesting to observe how, for example, Pope accommodates Shaftesbury and Mandeville in the Moral Essays.A fascinating anthology, Literature and the Social Order in Eighteenth-Century England, complete with editor’s introduction and notes on the passages, aims to suggest lines of inquiry without offering a ‘total’ reading.

Recent scholarship had emphasised the importance of a number of non-literary, economic and social debates to the understanding of Augustan Literature. Debates over the place of land, money, credit and luxury in society, as well as strands of radical thinking, are prominent throughout the period.Originally published in 1984, this anthology of eighteenth century writings about contemporary society is divided into sections on the social order, economics, the poor and crime, with a general introduction identifying some of the dominant social discourses of the period. They reflect the emergence of an embryonic capitalist society, with its challenge to feudal ties, and of a nascent bourgeois class. This collection of writings is not intended to provide material for an empirical historical account of these changes, but to give some idea of the ideological terms in which they are perceived, endorsed or contested by contemporaries; and provide a set of discursive contexts in which the imaginative literature of the period can be read. The texts themselves repay close analysis as the bearers of complex ideological positions and it is interesting to observe how, for example, Pope accommodates Shaftesbury and Mandeville in the Moral Essays.A fascinating anthology, Literature and the Social Order in Eighteenth-Century England, complete with editor’s introduction and notes on the passages, aims to suggest lines of inquiry without offering a ‘total’ reading.

The picturesque (a set of theories, ideas, and conventions that grew up around the question of how we look at landscape) offers a valuable focus for new investigations into the literary, artistic, social, and cultural history of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This volume of essays by scholars from various disciplines in Britain and America incorporates a range of historically and theoretically challenging approaches to the topic. It covers the writers most closely identified with the exposition of the picturesque as a theory, and also traces the influence and implications of its aesthetic in a variety of fields in the Romantic period, including literary and pictorial works, estate management, and women's fashion. Several essays deal more specifically with radical critiques and appropriations of the picturesque in the nineteenth century, while in others its influence is traced beyond traditionally accepted geographical or historical bounds.

First published in 1776, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is much more than just a handbook on the principles of free-market economics; it is a founding text for the organisation of Western society in its broadest sense.In order to understand the impact of Smith's text across the academic disciplines, this volume brings together leading scholars from fields of economics, politics, history, sociology and literature. Each essay offers a different reading of Wealth of Nations and its legacy.Contributors consider the historical context in which Wealth of Nations was written, its reception and its profound impact on contemporary concepts of market liberalism, on education, on gender relations and on environmental debates. The volume also offers deconstructive analyses of the text and a feminist critique of Smith's construction of the economy.This volume will be the ideal companion to Smith's work for all students of literature, politics and economic history.

First published in 1992. Beyond Romanticism represents a substantial challenge to traditional views of the Romantic period and provides a sustained critique of ‘Romantic ideology’. The debates with which it engages had previously been under-represented in the study of Romanticism, where the claims of history had never had quite the same status as they have had in other periods, and where confidence in poetic literary value remains high. Individual essays examine the philosophical underpinnings of Romantic discourse; they survey analogous and competing discourses of the period such as mesmerism, Hellenism, orientalism and nationalism; and analyse both the manifestations of Romanticism in particular historical and textual moments, and the texts and modes of writing which have been historically marginalized or silenced by ‘the Romantic’. This title will be of interest to students of literature.