The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780 offers readers discussions of the entire range of literary expression from the Restoration to the end of the eighteenth century. In essays by thirty distinguished scholars, recent historical perspectives and new critical approaches and methods are brought to bear on the classic authors and texts of the period. Forgotten or neglected authors and themes as well as new and emerging genres within the expanding marketplace for printed matter during the eighteenth century receive special attention and emphasis. The volume's guiding purpose is to examine the social and historical circumstances within which literary production and imaginative writing take place in the period and to evaluate the enduring verbal complexity and cultural insights they articulate so powerfully.

‘... the new Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780, is a welcome and needed reference ... a volume to ponder, to enjoy, and in places, to challenge. … the essays in this volume jostle against one another, some synthesizing recent information, some proposing new opinions, some challenging modern trends. Richetti and his colleagues are to be commended for producing a book that represents so much of the best recent thinking about eighteenth-century literature.'

Claudia Kairoff Source: Eighteenth-Century Life

‘This volume succeeds in representing the variety of texts between 1660 and 1780 that are studied as English literature, and simultaneously gives a lively sense of the debates, both in the period represented and in current criticism and scholarship, about the boundaries and the purpose of the category of literature ... The volume is reliable and stimulating. It will have a long life as a work of reference, and is an excellent indication of the current state of the subject.'

Source: Forum for Modern Language Studies

‘... this volume provides a comprehensive survey of authors and literary genres by focusing on a narrative account of what a variety of individual scholars regard as the most significant features of their subjects.'

Source: American Reference Books Annual

‘In briefly reflecting on a volume as compendious as this one it is needless to say how much of interest and value it contains that I haven't been able even to allude to. The centurial significance of the Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780, its status as the first of its kind since George Saintsbury and his Peace of the Augustans, only furthers the importance of Richetti's collection.'

Michael McKeon Source: SEL-Studies in English Literature