A deepening interest in both social and interior experience was a distinguishing feature of the cultural life of eighteenth-century Britain, influencing writers in all genres from fiction to philosophy. Focusing on this interplay of ideas and genres, Mark Phillips explores the ways in which writers and readers of history, memoir, biography and related literatures responded to the social and sentimental concerns of a modern, commercial society. He shows that the writing of history, which once concentrated exclusively on political events, widened its horizons in ways that often paralleled...

Tradition is a central concern for a wide range of academic disciplines interested in problems of transmitting culture across generations. Yet, the concept itself has received remarkably little analysis. A substantial literature has grown up around the notion of 'invented tradition, ' but no clear concept of tradition is to be found in these writings; since the very notion of 'invented tradition' presupposes a prior concept of tradition and is empty without one, this debunking usage has done as much to obscure the idea as to clarify it. In the absence of a shared concept, the various...

Tradition is a central concern for a wide range of academic disciplines interested in problems of transmitting culture across generations. Yet, the concept itself has received remarkably little analysis. A substantial literature has grown up around the notion of 'invented tradition, ' but no clear concept of tradition is to be found in these writings; since the very notion of 'invented tradition' presupposes a prior concept of tradition and is empty without one, this debunking usage has done as much to obscure the idea as to clarify it. In the absence of a shared concept, the various...

For this vivid description of the world of a Florentine patrician, Mark Phillips draws on Marco Parenti's private letters, ricordanze or diaries, and public history or memoir. When Cosimo de' Medici died in 1464, Parenti foresaw a return to liberty and began to write a history, but his political hopes and his literary ambitions foundered when the Medici party won a decisive victory over their patrician enemies in 1466. Despite this setback, Parenti's historical Memoir, recently rediscovered by Mark Phillips, is our best witness to this major crisis in Florentine politics.

Originally...