This is a meticulous and scholarly study of the polemical press of the 1740s, and the first substantial investigation of the politics of the Pelham regime for a generation. Robert Harris examines the vigorous and wide-ranging debate in tracts and periodicals about the principal issues of the day--the fall of Walpole, the influence of Hanover, the Forty-Five, and the War of the Austrian Succession. Harris's detailed analysis of the confusing and fragmented politics of the 1740s sheds important light on patterns of change and continuity in the political culture of mid-eighteenth-century English...

Harris presents a new picture of political life in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. Drawing on a great deal of original material, the book argues that British politics and political culture in that period have often been poorly understood through overemphasis on "stability." Using a thematic approach, it clearly reconstructs a political world in which vital issues continued to exercise the minds and emotions of those who made up the contemporary "political nation," a group that included far more than a handful of politicians who competed for national office.

'Politics and the Rise of the Press' compares the rise of the newspaper press in Britain & France, assessing how it influenced political life & culture. This detailed, comparative account will be of value to students of French & British history.