Today we consider privacy a right to be protected. But in eighteenth-century England, privacy was seen as a problem, even a threat. Women reading alone and people hiding their true thoughts from one another in conversation generated fears of uncontrollable fantasies and profound anxieties about insincerity.
In Privacy, Patricia Meyer Spacks explores eighteenth-century concerns about privacy and the strategies people developed to avoid public scrutiny and social pressure. She examines, for instance, the way people hid behind common rules of etiquette to mask their innermost feelings...

Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry recaptures for modern readers the urgency, distinctiveness and rewarding nature of this challenging and powerful body of poetry.

• An essential guide to reading eighteenth-century poetry, written by world-renowned critic, Patricia Meyer Spacks


• Exposes the multiplicity of forms, tones, and topics engaged by poets during this period


• Provides in-depth analysis of poems by established figures such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, as well as work by less familiar figures, including...

Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry recaptures for modern readers the urgency, distinctiveness and rewarding nature of this challenging and powerful body of poetry.

• An essential guide to reading eighteenth-century poetry, written by world-renowned critic, Patricia Meyer Spacks


• Exposes the multiplicity of forms, tones, and topics engaged by poets during this period


• Provides in-depth analysis of poems by established figures such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, as well as work by less familiar figures, including...