Hidden Gems from Fleet Street: New Perspectives on Non-Canonical and Popular Eighteenth-Century Literature
Beginning with the pamphlet wars during the Restoration and ending with authors serving as critics to one anothers’ writings in the Romantic period, the eighteenth century was rife was debates about how to define and identify good literature. Authors such as John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth, and many others served as adjudicators of good literature by chastising others’ work in their prefaces, poetry, pamphlets, and mock epics. Theater history and book history however, tells us that some of the works of these dunces were widely popular and important in their own right—regardless of how derided they were by their peers.