The Lab'ring Muses: Work, Writing, and the Social Order in English Plebian Poetry, 1730-1830.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-OCT-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Modern Humanities Research Association

The Lab'ring Muses: Work, Writing, and the Social Order in English Plebeian Poetry, 1730-1830. By WILLIAM J. CHRISTMAS. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2001. 364 pp. 44 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-87413-747-0.

Initial reaction to the title of this book will inevitably be slightly negative--is there indeed room for yet another analysis of that peculiarly eighteenth-century preoccupation with writers described in their own times as variously 'illiterate', 'primitive', 'uneducated', or, less often and more positively, 'self-taught'?

Any new assessment will need both a fresh approach and new information to be of value. William Christmas seeks to provide both; he has seen what he believes to be a clear development during the period in the production...

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