The web has
provided an opportunity for the publication of
material by and about poets whose non-canonical
status makes them less attractive to traditional
publishing enterprises. There are many good sites
on eighteenth-century poetry by women, for example,
including Laura Runge’s pages on Mary Robinson,
and pages on Anne Finch and Mary Leapor.
Samuel Johnson has more traditionally been placed
at the centre of eighteenth-century intellectual
and poetic life. Jack Lynch’s pages on Johnson,
his area of specialist interest, are excellent.
Full texts of Johnson’s Lives of the
Poets, Johnson’s assessment of the
achievements of his immediate elders in the trade,
are also available, along with selections of work
by the poets and other contextual information,
from Pennsylvania State University. Still more
traditional are W.C Dowling’s parallel presentation
of Horace’s Ars Poetica, Boileau’s
L’Art Poetique and Pope’s
An Essay on Criticism – an eighteenth-century
essay in verse with two of its French and Latin
predecessors – and the full text of James
Sutherland’s 1948 Preface to Eighteenth-Century
Poetry.
Those involved in, or wishing to get involved
in, the scholarly study of eighteenth-century
poetry might want to look at the British Society
for Eighteenth-Century Studies pages, to find
out about upcoming events and conferences. Dr
Tom Jones lectures in the School of English, University
of St Andrews, and is currently writing a book
about Alexander Pope and George Berkeley.
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Jack Lynch’s links
pages
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/index.html
Laura Runge’s pages on Mary Robinson
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/runge/MRobinson.htm
Anne Finch at the University of Pennsylvania
Celebration of Women Writers pages
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/finch/finch-anne.html
Mary Leapor
http://www.orgs.muohio.edu/womenpoets/leapor/
Jack Lynch’s Johnson pages
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/
Johnson’s Lives of the Poets
http://www.hn.psu.edu/faculty/kkemmerer/poets/
W.C. Dowling’s parallel selection
of Horace Ars Poetica, Boileau’s
L’Art Poetique and Pope’s
An Essay on Criticism http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/arspoet.htm
James Sutherland, A Preface to Eighteenth
Century Poetry
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/poet18/back1.htm
The British Society for Eighteenth-Century
Studies
http://www.bsecs.org.uk/
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