1700–1789

Abstract

The problem of exact periodicity is sharply apparent in the present chapter. The first 14 years of this new ‘period’ are ruled by the last of the Stuart* line [see glosses in Chapter 2], while the Hanoverian* succession lasts from 1714, with the accession of King George I, to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 (see Chapters 4 and 5). However, because literary history tends to see Queen Anne’s reign (1702–14) — if not the last two decades of the 17th Century — as part of the Neo-Classical* or Augustan* period, the start-date for this chapter goes back to 1700. Furthermore, modern historians often use the concept of the ‘Long 18th Century’ when dealing with the period under consideration, a period of political change and consolidation which stretches roughly from The Glorious Revolution of 1688 [see Chapter 2] to the passing of the First Reform Bill in 1832 [see Chapter 5]. While this prevents the period being broken up into artificial/arbitrary segments, for the purposes of literary history it includes too diverse a range of movements and tendencies — although, as we shall see, there are also overlaps and continuities between the Augustan* and Romantic* movements [for the latter, see Chapter 4]. The chapter ends with the year of The French Revolution in 1789 [see Chapter 4 for more on this and its aftermath].