18th century in literature  

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== Publishers == == Publishers ==
-[[Edmund Curll]]+[[Edmund Curll]], see [[publisher]]s
Line 32: Line 32:
: [[Robinson Crusoe]] (1719) - [[Pamela]] (1740) - [[Dom Bougre]] (1741) - [[Le Sopha, conte moral]] (1742) - [[Thérèse Philosophe]] (1748) - [[Les Bijoux indiscrets]] (1748) - [[Fanny Hill]] (1750) - [[Tristram Shandy]] (1760-1770) - [[The Castle of Otranto]] (1765) - [[Les Liaisons dangereuses]] (1782) - [[The 120 Days of Sodom]] (1785) - [[The Mysteries of Udolpho]] (1794) - [[La Religieuse]] (1796) - [[The Monk]] (1796) - [[L'Histoire de Juliette]] (1797) : [[Robinson Crusoe]] (1719) - [[Pamela]] (1740) - [[Dom Bougre]] (1741) - [[Le Sopha, conte moral]] (1742) - [[Thérèse Philosophe]] (1748) - [[Les Bijoux indiscrets]] (1748) - [[Fanny Hill]] (1750) - [[Tristram Shandy]] (1760-1770) - [[The Castle of Otranto]] (1765) - [[Les Liaisons dangereuses]] (1782) - [[The 120 Days of Sodom]] (1785) - [[The Mysteries of Udolpho]] (1794) - [[La Religieuse]] (1796) - [[The Monk]] (1796) - [[L'Histoire de Juliette]] (1797)
 +
 +==European literature in the 18th century==
 +[[European literature]] of the 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama and novels) produced in Europe during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the [[modern novel]] as literary genre, in fact many [[First novel in English|candidates for the first novel in English]] date from this period, of which [[Daniel Defoe]]'s 1719 ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' is probably the best known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the [[epistolary novel]], the [[sentimental novel]], [[Histories (history of the novel)|histories]], the [[gothic novel]] and the [[libertine novel]].
 +
 +18th Century Europe started in the [[Age of Enlightenment]] and gradually moved towards [[Romanticism#Art and literature|Romanticism]]. In the visual arts, it was the period of [[Neoclassicism]].
 +
 +See also:
 +*[[French literature of the 18th century]],
 +*[[Novel#Sentimentalism.2C Psychology.2C and a New Individual.2C 1750-1850|The novel and new psychology in the 18th century]]
 +*[[List of years in literature#1800s|List of years in literature: the 1800s]]
 +* [[Neoclassicism#Literary neoclassicism|Literary neoclassicism]]
 +*[[English literature]]: [[Augustan literature]], [[Amatory fiction|British amatory fiction]]
 +*[[German literature]]: [[German Romanticism]], [[Sturm und Drang]]
 +
 +=== The Enlightenment ===
 +The 18th century in Europe was The Age of Enlightenment and literature explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, geographical exploration and the comparison between the supposed natural state of man and the supposed civilized state of man. [[Edmund Burke]], in his [[A Vindication of Natural Society]] (1757), says: ''"The Fabrick of Superstition has in this our Age and Nation received much ruder Shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the Chinks and Breaches of our Prison, we see such Glimmerings of Light, and feel such refreshing Airs of Liberty, as daily raise our Ardor for more"''
 +
 +== By year ==
 +In 1700 [[William Congreve (playwright)|William Congreve]]'s play ''[[The Way of the World]]'' premiered. [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/wwrld10.txt] Although unsuccessful at the time ''The Way of the World'' is a good example of the sophistication of theatrical thinking during this period, with complex [[subplot]]s and characters intended as ironic parodies of common [[stereotype]]s.
 +
 +In 1703 [[Nicholas Rowe (dramatist)|Nicholas Rowe]]'s domestic drama ''The Fair Penitent'', an adaptation of [[Massinger]] and [[Nathan Field|Field]]'s ''Fatal Dowry'', was pronounced by [[Dr Johnson]] to be one of the most pleasing tragedies in the language. Also in [1703] [[Sir Richard Steele]]'s comedy 'The Tender Husband'' achieved some success.
 +
 +In 1704 [[Jonathan Swift]] published ''[[A Tale of a Tub]]'' and ''[[The Battle of the Books]]'' [http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/battle.html] and [[John Dennis (dramatist)|John Dennis]] published his ''Grounds of Criticism in Poetry''. ''The Battle of the Books'' begins with a reference to the use of a glass (which, in those days, would mean either a [[mirror]] or a [[magnifying glass]]) as a comparison to the use of satire. Swift is, in this, very much the child of his age, thinking in terms of [[science]] and [[satire]] at one and the same time. He was one of the first English novelists and also a political campaigner. His satirical writing springs from a body of liberal thought which produced not only books but also political pamphlets for public distribution. Swift's writing represents the new, the different and the modern attempting to change the world by parodying the ancient and incumbent. ''The Battle of the Books'' is a short writing which demonstrates his position very neatly.
 +
 +From 1704 to 1717, [[Antoine Galland]] published the first European translation of the ''[[One Thousand and One Nights]]'' (also known as ''The Arabian Nights'' in English).<ref name=Grimm>Jacob W. Grimm (1982). ''Selected Tales '' pg 19. Penguin Classics</ref> His version of the tales appeared in twelve volumes and exerted a huge influence on subsequent [[European literature]] and attitudes to the [[Muslim world|Islamic world]]. Galland's translation of the ''Nights'' was immensely popular throughout Europe, and later versions of the ''Nights'' were written by Galland's publisher using Galland's name without his consent.
 +
 +In 1707, [[Henry Fielding]] was born (22 April) and his sister [[Sarah Fielding]] was born 3 years later on 8 November 1710. In 1711 [[Alexander Pope]] began a career in literature with the publishing of his ''[[An Essay on Criticism]]''. In 1712 [[French people|French]] [[philosophy|philosophical]] writer [[Jean Jacques Rousseau]] born 28 June and his countryman [[Denis Diderot]] was born the following year 1713 on the [[5 October]]. Also in 1712 Pope published ''The Rape of the Lock'' and in 1713 ''Windsor Forest''.
 +
 +In 1708, [[Simon Ockley]] publishes an [[English language|English]] translation of [[Ibn Tufail]]'s ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan]]'', a 12th-century [[philosophical novel]], as ''The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan''. This was the first English translation directly from the [[Arabic literature|Arabic original]].
 +
 +[[Horace Walpole]] was born on 24 September 1717.
 +
 +[[Daniel Defoe]] was another political pamphleteer turned novelist like Jonathan Swift and was publishing in the early [[18th century]]. In 1719 he published ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'', in 1720, ''Captain Singleton'' and, in 1722, ''[[Moll Flanders]]''.
 +
 +Other authors publishing in 1722 included [[Sir Richard Steele]], [[Penelope Aubin]] and [[Eliza Haywood]].
 +
 +From 1726 to 1729 [[Voltaire]] lived in exile mainly in [[England]].
 +
 +Also in 1726, Jonathan Swift published [[Gulliver's Travels]], one of the first novels in the genre of [[satire]].
 +
 +In 1728 [[John Gay]] wrote ''[[The Beggar's Opera]]'' which has increased in fame ever since. ''The Beggar's Opera'' began a new style in Opera, the "ballad opera" which brings the operatic form down to a more popular level and precedes the genre of comic [[operetta]]s. Also in 1728 came the publication of ''[[Cyclopaedia]], or, A Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences'' (folio, 2 vols.), an encyclopedia by [[Ephraim Chambers]]. The Cyclopaedia was one of the first general encyclopedias to be produced in English and was the main model for [[Diderot]]'s ''[[Encyclopédie]]'' (published in France between 1751 and 1766).
 +
 +In 1729 Jonathan Swift published ''[[A Modest Proposal]]'', a satirical suggestion that [[Irish people|Irish]] families should sell their children as food. Swift was, at this time, fully involved in political campaigning for the Irish.
 +
 +In 1731 [[George Lillo]]'s play ''The London Merchant'' was a success at the Theatre-Royal in [[Drury Lane]]. It was a new kind of play, a domestic tragedy, which approximates to what later came to be called a [[melodrama]].
 +
 +In 1740 [[Samuel Richardson]] published ''[[Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded]]''.
 +
 +1744 Alexander Pope died.
 +
 +1745 Jonathan Swift died.
 +
 +1749 [[Henry Fielding]] published ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling]]''.
 +
 +1751 [[Thomas Gray]] wrote ''[[Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard]]''. Denis Diderot began the ''[[Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers]]''. Over the next three decades ''Encyclopédie'' attracted, alongside of those from Diderot, notable contributions from other great intellectuals of the 18th Century including [[Voltaire]], [[Rousseau]] and [[Louis de Jaucourt]]
 +
 +1752 a satirical short story by [[Voltaire]], ''[[Micromégas]]'' featured space travellers visiting earth. It was one of the first stories leaning toward what later became [[Science fiction]]. Its publication at this time is indicative of the trend toward scientific thinking prevalent in the age of enlightenment.
 +
 +1754 [[Henry Fielding]] died 8 October.
 +
 +1759 [[Voltaire]] published ''[[Candide]]''. [[Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller]] was born 10 November.
 +
 +1760 - 1767 [[Laurence Sterne]] wrote ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Tristram Shandy]]''.
 +
 +[[1761 in literature|1761]] [[Jean Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]] published [[Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse]].
 +
 +1762 [[Jean Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]] published [[Emile: or, On Education|Émile]].
 +
 +1764 [[Horace Walpole]] published ''[[The Castle of Otranto]]'' (initially under a pseudonym and claiming it to be a translation of an Italian work from 1529.) The first [[gothic novel]].
 +
 +1766 [[Oliver Goldsmith]] published ''[[The Vicar of Wakefield]]''.
 +
 +1767 [[August Wilhelm von Schlegel]] was born 8 September.
 +
 +1768 [[Sarah Fielding]] died.
 +
 +1770 April birth of [[William Wordsworth]].
 +
 +1772 [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel]] was born 10 March.
 +
 +1773 [[Oliver Goldsmith]]'s play ''[[She Stoops to Conquer]]'', a [[farce]], was performed in [[London]].
 +
 +1774 [[Goethe]] wrote ''[[The Sorrows of Young Werther]]'', a novel which approximately marks the beginning of the [[Romanticism]] movement in the [[arts]] and [[philosophy]]. A transition thus began, from the critical, science inspired, enlightenment writing to the romantic yearning for forces beyond the mundane and for foreign times and places to inspire the [[soul]] with passion and mystery.
 +
 +1777 the comedy play ''[[The School for Scandal]]'', a [[comedy of manners]], was written by [[Richard Brinsley Sheridan]].
 +
 +1778 Death of [[Voltaire]]. Death of [[Jean Jacques Rousseau]] 2 July. Two major contributors to Diderot's ''Encyclopédie'' dead in the same year.
 +
 +1783 [[Washington Irving]] was born.
 +
 +1784 [[Denis Diderot]] died 31 July. Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot have all died within a period of a few short years and French [[philosophy]] had thus lost three of its greatest enlightened free thinkers. Rousseau's thinking on the nobility of life in the wilds, facing nature as a naked savage still had great force to influence the next generation as the romantic movement gained momentum. [[Beaumarchais]] wrote ''[[The Marriage of Figaro]]''. [[Maria Falconar|Maria]] and [[Harriet Falconar]] publish ''[[Poems on Slavery]]''. The anti-slavery movement was growing in power and many poems and pamphlets were published on the subject.
 +
 +1785 [[William Cowper]] published ''[[The Task (poem)|The Task]]''
 +
 +1786 [[Robert Burns]] published ''[[Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect]]''. The mood of literature was swinging toward more interest in diverse ethnicity. [[Beaumarchais]]' ''The Marriage of Figaro'' (''Le Nozze di Figaro'') was adapted into a comic opera composed by [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]], with [[libretto]] by [[Lorenzo da Ponte]].
 +
 +1789 [[James Fenimore Cooper]] was born 15 September in [[United States|America]].
 +
 +1791 ''[[Dream of the Red Chamber]]'' is published for the first time in movable type format.
 +
 +1792 [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]] was born (August 4).
 +
 +1793 ''[[Salisbury Plain]]'' by [[William Wordsworth]].
 +
 +1794 [[Robert Goldsmith]] was born.
 +
 +In 1795 [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] met [[William Wordsworth]] and his sister Dorothy. The two men published a joint volume of poetry, ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]'' (1798), which became a central text of Romantic poetry.
 +
 +1796 [[Thomas Chandler Haliburton]] was born. [[Denis Diderot]]'s ''[[Jacques le fataliste]]'' was published posthumously.
 +
 +1796 [[Matthew Lewis (writer)|Matthew Lewis]] published his controversial, anti-catholic novel ''[[The Monk]]''.
 +
 +1796 [[Charlotte Turner Smith]] published her novel ''[[Marchmont]]''.
 +
 +See main article: [[European Enlightenment Literature]]
 +
 +See also: [[List of years in literature]]:
 +
 +[[List of years in literature#1700s|1700s]] - [[List of years in literature#1710s|1710s]] - [[List of years in literature#1720s|1720s]] - [[List of years in literature#1730s|1730s]] - [[List of years in literature#1740s|1740s]] - [[List of years in literature#1750s|1750s]] - [[List of years in literature#1760s|1760s]] - [[List of years in literature#1770s|1770s]] - [[List of years in literature#1780s|1780s]] - [[List of years in literature#1790s|1790s]] - [[List of years in literature#1800s|1800s]]
 +
 +=== Selected list of novels ===
 +*[[Simon Ockley]], ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan|The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan]]'' ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1708) - English translation of [[Ibn Tufail]]'s ''Hayy ibn Yaqdhan'' ([[12th century in literature|12th century]])
 +*[[Daniel Defoe]], ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1719) - considered the [[first novel in English]]
 +*[[Eliza Haywood]], ''[[Love in Excess]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1719)
 +*[[Samuel Richardson]], ''[[Pamela]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1740)
 +*[[Henry Fielding]], ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1749)
 +*[[Laurence Sterne]], ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Tristram Shandy]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1759-1767)
 +*[[Tobias Smollett]], ''[[The Expedition of Humphry Clinker]]'', ([[Scotland|Scottish]], 1771)
 +*[[Ignacy Krasicki]], ''[[The Adventures of Nicholas Experience]]'' ([[Poland|Polish]], 1776) - the first [[Poland|Polish]] novel
 +*[[Frances Burney]], ''[[Evelina]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1778)
 +*[[Ann Radcliffe]], ''[[The Mysteries of Udolpho]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1794)
 +*[[Mary Hays]], ''[[Memoirs of Emma Courtney]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1796)
 +*[[Matthew Lewis (writer)|Matthew Lewis]], ''[[The Monk]]'', ([[United Kingdom|British]], 1796)
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All in all, literature was not so widespread as in the following century, since paper was still quite expensive, see cheap paper.

Literature of the 18th century refers to world literature produced during the 18th century. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this period. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, the sentimental novel, "histories", the gothic novel and the libertine novel. 18th Century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism.

Although the modern novel as literary genre solidified, literacy rates were still very low as there was no primary education for the common man. As Resa L. Dudovitz notes in The Myth of Superwoman, "a novel which sold well in the eighteenth century - and even the most successful book rarely sold more than a few thousand copies - did so within a fairly closed circle of readers, many of whom as writers also participated in deciding the prevailing criteria of literary excellence, [...], by the mid-nineteenth century cheaper editions and improved access to reading material through subscriptions and in France, through reading rooms, pushed sales of a popular novel as high as 10,000 copies. Although critics continued to function as the arbiters of taste, the critical elite could no longer claim literature to be their exclusive property."

The English novel became a popular form in the 18th century, with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740). Another very popular form was the Gothic novel (The Castle of Otranto, 1764) and its European equivalents the roman noir in France and the Schauerroman in Germany.

Early European bestsellers were Julie, or the New Heloise by Rousseau and The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe.

There was already literature of subversion such as that from Voltaire and Sade and other libertine writers. In the United Kingdom there was the renegade publisher William Dugdale known for his radical pamphlets and bawdy books.

A good introduction to this period, one which describes the popular literature of that era in France very well, is The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France.

Contents

Genres

Some of the lesser and better-known examples of 18th century literary genres include amatory fiction, the adventure novel, the epistolary novel, the gothic novel, "histories", libertine novels and the sentimental novel.

Publishers

Edmund Curll, see publishers


Background

enlightenment - Neoclassicism - French Revolution

Authors

Abbé Prévost - William Blake - Restif de la Bretonne - Casanova - John Cleland - Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon - Daniel Defoe - Marquis de Sade - Denis Diderot - David Hume - Immanuel Kant - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Delarivier Manley - André de Nerciat - Ann Radcliffe - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Jonathan Swift - Giambattista Vico - Voltaire - Horace Walpole - Mary Wollstonecraft

Titles

Robinson Crusoe (1719) - Pamela (1740) - Dom Bougre (1741) - Le Sopha, conte moral (1742) - Thérèse Philosophe (1748) - Les Bijoux indiscrets (1748) - Fanny Hill (1750) - Tristram Shandy (1760-1770) - The Castle of Otranto (1765) - Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) - The 120 Days of Sodom (1785) - The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) - La Religieuse (1796) - The Monk (1796) - L'Histoire de Juliette (1797)


European literature in the 18th century

European literature of the 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama and novels) produced in Europe during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this period, of which Daniel Defoe's 1719 Robinson Crusoe is probably the best known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel.

18th Century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism.

See also:

The Enlightenment

The 18th century in Europe was The Age of Enlightenment and literature explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, geographical exploration and the comparison between the supposed natural state of man and the supposed civilized state of man. Edmund Burke, in his A Vindication of Natural Society (1757), says: "The Fabrick of Superstition has in this our Age and Nation received much ruder Shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the Chinks and Breaches of our Prison, we see such Glimmerings of Light, and feel such refreshing Airs of Liberty, as daily raise our Ardor for more"

By year

In 1700 William Congreve's play The Way of the World premiered. [1] Although unsuccessful at the time The Way of the World is a good example of the sophistication of theatrical thinking during this period, with complex subplots and characters intended as ironic parodies of common stereotypes.

In 1703 Nicholas Rowe's domestic drama The Fair Penitent, an adaptation of Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry, was pronounced by Dr Johnson to be one of the most pleasing tragedies in the language. Also in [1703] Sir Richard Steele's comedy 'The Tender Husband achieved some success.

In 1704 Jonathan Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books [2] and John Dennis published his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry. The Battle of the Books begins with a reference to the use of a glass (which, in those days, would mean either a mirror or a magnifying glass) as a comparison to the use of satire. Swift is, in this, very much the child of his age, thinking in terms of science and satire at one and the same time. He was one of the first English novelists and also a political campaigner. His satirical writing springs from a body of liberal thought which produced not only books but also political pamphlets for public distribution. Swift's writing represents the new, the different and the modern attempting to change the world by parodying the ancient and incumbent. The Battle of the Books is a short writing which demonstrates his position very neatly.

From 1704 to 1717, Antoine Galland published the first European translation of the One Thousand and One Nights (also known as The Arabian Nights in English).<ref name=Grimm>Jacob W. Grimm (1982). Selected Tales pg 19. Penguin Classics</ref> His version of the tales appeared in twelve volumes and exerted a huge influence on subsequent European literature and attitudes to the Islamic world. Galland's translation of the Nights was immensely popular throughout Europe, and later versions of the Nights were written by Galland's publisher using Galland's name without his consent.

In 1707, Henry Fielding was born (22 April) and his sister Sarah Fielding was born 3 years later on 8 November 1710. In 1711 Alexander Pope began a career in literature with the publishing of his An Essay on Criticism. In 1712 French philosophical writer Jean Jacques Rousseau born 28 June and his countryman Denis Diderot was born the following year 1713 on the 5 October. Also in 1712 Pope published The Rape of the Lock and in 1713 Windsor Forest.

In 1708, Simon Ockley publishes an English translation of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, a 12th-century philosophical novel, as The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan. This was the first English translation directly from the Arabic original.

Horace Walpole was born on 24 September 1717.

Daniel Defoe was another political pamphleteer turned novelist like Jonathan Swift and was publishing in the early 18th century. In 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, in 1720, Captain Singleton and, in 1722, Moll Flanders.

Other authors publishing in 1722 included Sir Richard Steele, Penelope Aubin and Eliza Haywood.

From 1726 to 1729 Voltaire lived in exile mainly in England.

Also in 1726, Jonathan Swift published Gulliver's Travels, one of the first novels in the genre of satire.

In 1728 John Gay wrote The Beggar's Opera which has increased in fame ever since. The Beggar's Opera began a new style in Opera, the "ballad opera" which brings the operatic form down to a more popular level and precedes the genre of comic operettas. Also in 1728 came the publication of Cyclopaedia, or, A Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (folio, 2 vols.), an encyclopedia by Ephraim Chambers. The Cyclopaedia was one of the first general encyclopedias to be produced in English and was the main model for Diderot's Encyclopédie (published in France between 1751 and 1766).

In 1729 Jonathan Swift published A Modest Proposal, a satirical suggestion that Irish families should sell their children as food. Swift was, at this time, fully involved in political campaigning for the Irish.

In 1731 George Lillo's play The London Merchant was a success at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane. It was a new kind of play, a domestic tragedy, which approximates to what later came to be called a melodrama.

In 1740 Samuel Richardson published Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded.

1744 Alexander Pope died.

1745 Jonathan Swift died.

1749 Henry Fielding published The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.

1751 Thomas Gray wrote Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Denis Diderot began the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Over the next three decades Encyclopédie attracted, alongside of those from Diderot, notable contributions from other great intellectuals of the 18th Century including Voltaire, Rousseau and Louis de Jaucourt

1752 a satirical short story by Voltaire, Micromégas featured space travellers visiting earth. It was one of the first stories leaning toward what later became Science fiction. Its publication at this time is indicative of the trend toward scientific thinking prevalent in the age of enlightenment.

1754 Henry Fielding died 8 October.

1759 Voltaire published Candide. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was born 10 November.

1760 - 1767 Laurence Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy.

1761 Rousseau published Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse.

1762 Rousseau published Émile.

1764 Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto (initially under a pseudonym and claiming it to be a translation of an Italian work from 1529.) The first gothic novel.

1766 Oliver Goldsmith published The Vicar of Wakefield.

1767 August Wilhelm von Schlegel was born 8 September.

1768 Sarah Fielding died.

1770 April birth of William Wordsworth.

1772 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel was born 10 March.

1773 Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer, a farce, was performed in London.

1774 Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, a novel which approximately marks the beginning of the Romanticism movement in the arts and philosophy. A transition thus began, from the critical, science inspired, enlightenment writing to the romantic yearning for forces beyond the mundane and for foreign times and places to inspire the soul with passion and mystery.

1777 the comedy play The School for Scandal, a comedy of manners, was written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

1778 Death of Voltaire. Death of Jean Jacques Rousseau 2 July. Two major contributors to Diderot's Encyclopédie dead in the same year.

1783 Washington Irving was born.

1784 Denis Diderot died 31 July. Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot have all died within a period of a few short years and French philosophy had thus lost three of its greatest enlightened free thinkers. Rousseau's thinking on the nobility of life in the wilds, facing nature as a naked savage still had great force to influence the next generation as the romantic movement gained momentum. Beaumarchais wrote The Marriage of Figaro. Maria and Harriet Falconar publish Poems on Slavery. The anti-slavery movement was growing in power and many poems and pamphlets were published on the subject.

1785 William Cowper published The Task

1786 Robert Burns published Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. The mood of literature was swinging toward more interest in diverse ethnicity. Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) was adapted into a comic opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte.

1789 James Fenimore Cooper was born 15 September in America.

1791 Dream of the Red Chamber is published for the first time in movable type format.

1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley was born (August 4).

1793 Salisbury Plain by William Wordsworth.

1794 Robert Goldsmith was born.

In 1795 Samuel Taylor Coleridge met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The two men published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads (1798), which became a central text of Romantic poetry.

1796 Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born. Denis Diderot's Jacques le fataliste was published posthumously.

1796 Matthew Lewis published his controversial, anti-catholic novel The Monk.

1796 Charlotte Turner Smith published her novel Marchmont.

See main article: European Enlightenment Literature

See also: List of years in literature:

1700s - 1710s - 1720s - 1730s - 1740s - 1750s - 1760s - 1770s - 1780s - 1790s - 1800s

Selected list of novels





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "18th century in literature" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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