Overview

Studies of the eighteenth-century periodical have long tended to understand the form according to the period’s own insistence on adhering to and promoting politeness. In contrast, this collection reads for impoliteness, revealing a more nuanced, granular, and dynamic view of eighteenth-century periodicals such as Addison and Steele’s popular The Spectator, and a fuller sense of their value within the societies that produced and consumed them. By inverting the traditional focus, this volume promotes a new history of the periodical characterized not as highbrow gatekeeper of literary taste, but as incongruent, idiosyncratic, and impolite. Impolite Periodicals thus brings together a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century periodical publication, not simply to argue that periodicals could be impolite, but to explore how readings of their potential impoliteness might affect our understanding of their literary and social significance. This collection relishes and lingers on signs of rudeness, inconsistency, impurity, and failure. With an afterword by Manushag N. Powell. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Full Product Details

Author:   Emrys D. Jones ,  Adam James Smith ,  Katarina Stenke ,  Anthony Pollock
Publisher:   Bucknell University Press,U.S.
Imprint:   Bucknell University Press,U.S.
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781684485772

ISBN 10:   1684485770
Pages:   214
Publication Date:   13 January 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Editors’ Note Introduction Emrys D. Jones, Adam James Smith, Katarina Stenke Section 1: Polite Agendas Chapter 1. Situating Civility: Shaftesbury, Reformist Ridicule, and The Case of the Several Tatlers Anthony Pollock Chapter 2. Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and [Im]politeness after The Spectator Adam James Smith Chapter 3. Polite Impostures: Addison’s Orientalist Spectators Katarina Stenke Section 2: Impolite Spaces Chapter 4. “A Little Chasm in Conversation”: Politeness and Faction in Political Periodicals of the 1730s Emrys D. Jones Chapter 5. Originality, Obligation, and Offense in the British Magazine, 1746–1751 Jennifer Batt Chapter 6. “The Witty Wink, and he! he! he!”: Impolite Poetry in the Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Claire Knowles Section 3: Impolite Discourses Chapter 7. Conscience is a Pair of Breeches: Terrae Filius Periodicals, 1707–1763 Richard Squibbs Chapter 8. “A Time when Banter Ought to Cease”: Roasting, Jesting, and Bantering Readers Jennifer Buckley Chapter 9. “The World is one Undistinguished Wild”: James Boswell and the Hypochondriack Self Laura Davies Section 4: Impolite Legacies Chapter 10. The Polished Read and Impolite Waste of The Spectator Amélie Junqua Chapter 11. Addison’s Errors Charlotte Roberts Afterword Manushag Powell Acknowledgements Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index  

Reviews

""Delving the attractions and rhetorical potentials of impoliteness, this volume exposes the pleasures and anxieties polite periodicals found in their more unruly impulses, revealing the impolite instincts undergirding polite agendas, the impolite spaces pressuring authorship, and the discourteous discourses and legacies that upend soothing narratives of civility."" --Mark Schoenfield ""author of British Periodicals and Romantic Identity: The ""Literary Lower Empire"""" ""This excellent book productively agitates traditional thinking about periodicals in the first half of the eighteenth century. Alive to the multiple cultural, commercial, and political stakes of politeness and impoliteness, it allows us to take eighteenth-century periodicals on their own terms, in all their vitality and messiness."" --Jennie Batchelor ""author of The Lady's Magazine (1770-1832) and the Making of Literary History""

Author Information

EMRYS D. JONES is a senior lecturer in eighteenth-century literature and culture at King's College London. ADAM JAMES SMITH is a senior lecturer in eighteenth-century literature at York St. John University in the United Kingdom. KATARINA STENKE is a lecturer in eighteenth-century literature at the University of Greenwich in London.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions