Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.

This is a comprehensive 1997 account of the history of literary criticism in Britain and Europe between 1660 and 1800. Unlike previous histories, it is not just a chronological survey of critical writing, but a multidisciplinary investigation of how the understanding of literature and its various genres was transformed, at the start of the modern era, by developments in philosophy, psychology, the natural sciences, linguistics, and other disciplines, as well as in society at large. In the process, modern literary theory - at first often implicit in literary texts themselves - emancipated itself from classical poetics and rhetoric, and literary criticism emerged as a full-time professional activity catering for an expanding literate public. The volume is international both in coverage and in authorship. Extensive bibliographies provide guidance for further specialised study.

This two-volume set presents a comprehensive and up-to-date history of eighteenth-century philosophy. The subject is treated systematically by topic, not by individual thinker, school, or movement, thus enabling a much more historically nuanced picture of the period to be painted.

This is the first book to provide comprehensive coverage of the full range of philosophical writing in Britain in the eighteenth century. A team of experts provide new accounts of both major and lesser-known thinkers, and explores the diverse approaches in the period to logic and metaphysics, the passions, morality, criticism, and politics.

This is an impressive and lucid survey of eighteenth-century intellectual life, providing a real sense of the complexity of the age and of the cultural and intellectual climate in which imaginative literature flourished. It reflects on some of the dominant themes of the period, arguing against such labels as 'Augustan Age', 'Age of Enlightenment' and 'Age of Reason', which have been attached to the eighteenth-century by critics and historians.

John Wesley and George Whitefield are remembered as founders of Methodism, one of the most influential movements in the history of modern Christianity. Characterized by open-air and itinerant preaching, eighteenth-century Methodism was a divisive phenomenon, which attracted a torrent of printed opposition, especially from Anglican clergymen. Yet, most of these opponents have been virtually forgotten. Anti-Methodism and Theological Controversy in Eighteenth-Century England is the first large-scale examination of the theological ideas of early anti-Methodist authors. By illuminating a very different perspective on Methodism, Simon Lewis provides a fundamental reappraisal of the eighteenth-century Church of England and its doctrinal priorities. For anti-Methodist authors, attacking Wesley and Whitefield was part of a wider defence of 'true religion', which demonstrates the theological vitality of the much-derided Georgian Church. This book, therefore, places Methodism firmly in its contemporary theological context, as part of the Church of England's continuing struggle to define itself theologically.