18th century in literature  

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Comte de Mirabeau's 18th century story Le Libertin de qualité was brought to television in the late 20th century series Série rose: Les Chefs d’œuvre de la littérature érotique

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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.

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:

• French literature of the 18th century,
• The novel and new psychology in the 18th century
• List of years in literature: the 1800s
• Literary neoclassicism
• English literature: Augustan literature, 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"

Selected list of novels

• Simon Ockley, The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan (British, 1708) - English translation of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (12th century)
• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, (British, 1719) - considered the first novel in English
• Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess, (British, 1719)
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela, (British, 1740)
• Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, (British, 1749)
• Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, (British, 1759-1767)
• Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, (Scottish, 1771)
• Ignacy Krasicki, The Adventures of Nicholas Experience (Polish, 1776) - the first Polish novel
• Frances Burney, Evelina, (British, 1778)
• Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, (British, 1794)
• Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, (British, 1796)
• Matthew Lewis, The Monk, (British, 1796)

See also

• 18th century literature by year