Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681-1714

Poetry and the Creation of Whig Literary Culture offers a revisionist history of early eighteenth-century poetry. It demonstrates that many of the Whig writers frequently attacked as hacks and dunces by Alexander Pope and John Dryden were in fact successful and popular in their own time. Writers such as Joseph Addison, John Dennis, Thomas Tickell, and Richard Blackmore produced elevated poetry celebrating the achievements of post-Revolution Britain, verse which was heralded by their Whig contemporaries as the evidence of a new native literary excellence. This book maps for the first time the evolution of this distinct poetic tradition, offering new insights into the relationship between literary and political culture in the early eighteenth-century.

Abigail Williams is a Fellow and Tutor in English at St. Peter's College, University of Oxford.