What did it mean to be a "Patriot" during the Walpole administration? This is the first full-length study of the so-called Patriot opposition to Walpole which reached its height during the clamor for war against Spain at the turn of the 1730s. Christine Gerrard examines the interrelationship between patriotism, politics, and poetry in the period 1724-1742, looking at the poetry and drama of such authors as James Thomson, Alexander Pope, and the young Samuel Johnson, who were all drawn to the heady idealism of the young Boy Patriots. Other authors discussed include Bolingbroke, Lyttleton,...

Christine Gerrard offers a lively and engaging account of one of the most interesting yet neglected figures in the age of Pope. Theater impresario, poet, and commercial entrepreneur, Aaron Hill enjoyed close relationships with Eliza Haywood and Samuel Richardson, and endured a difficult love-hate frienship with Pope.

This broad-ranging Companion offers readers a thorough grounding in both the background and the substance of eighteenth-century poetry in all its rich variety.

• Provides an up-to-date and wide-ranging guide to eighteenth-century poetry
• Reflects the dramatic transformation which has taken place in the study of eighteenth-century poetry over the past two decades
• Opens with a section on contexts, discussing poetry's relationships with patriotism, politics, science, and the visual arts, for example
• Discusses poetry by male and female poets from all...