Augustan to Gothic (1713-1789)

Socio cultural context review

Some general information on the socio political context of the Augustan to Gothic era: The
Augustan to Gothic period began after the death of Queen Anne (youngest child of James II) in
1714. The German House of Hanover took over the British throne: George I, George II and
George III. At that time, the monarchy was not popular, and there were two rebellions led by
the catholic son and grandson of James II in 1715 and 1745, but both were defeated.
Government power was increased because the new king spoke only German, and did not seem
very interested in his new Kingdom. Among the king’s ministers was Robert Walpole, who
remained the greatest political leader for over twenty years. He is considered Britain’s first
Prime Minister.

With respect to the socio cultural context, this was the time of the Industrial and Agricultural
Revolution. New inventions made manufacturing processes quicker and British trade with the
rest of the world grew enormously. At the same time, new processes in agriculture forced
many people to move from the country to the new cities to find work. It was also a time when
many people, especially from Scotland and Ireland, went to live in the new colonies in
America. Towards the end of the century a new mood of freedom began to grow: the
American Declaration of Independence in 1776 was the first sign of this, and later the French
Revolution in 1789 brought the spirit of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” to Europe. It was also
the economic power of the new middle classes which gave the nation its strength and its
political power.

When Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, died in 1714, it was not entirely certain that the
Protestant ruler of Hanover, George, would become king. There were some Tories who
wanted the deposed James II’s son to return to Britain as James III. If he had given up
Catholicism and accepted the Anglican religion he probably would have been crowned James
III. But like other members of his family, James was unwilling to change his mind, and he
would not give up his religion. Now would he give up his claim to the throne, so he tried to
win it by force. In 1715 he started a rebellion against George I, who had by this time arrived
from Hanover. But the rebellion was a disaster, and George’s army had little difficulty in
defeating the English and Scottish “Jacobites”, as Stuart supporters were known.

Walpole skilfully developed the idea that government ministers should work together in a
small group, which was called the “Cabinet”. From this basic idea grew another important
rule in British politics: that all members of the Cabinet were together responsible for policy
decisions.

George III was the first Hanoverian to be born in Britain. Unlike his father and grandfather he
had no interest in Hanover. He wanted to take a more active part in governing Britain, and in
particular he wished to be free to choose his own ministers.

The revolution in thought:

The influence of Puritanism increased greatly during the seventeenth century, particularly
among the merchant class and lesser gentry. It was the Puritans who persuaded James I to
permit a new official “authorised” translation of the Bible. It was published in 1611. This
beautiful translation was a great work of English literature, and it encouraged Bible reading
among all those who could read and that was a new revolution in religious thinking.

The revolution in religious thinking was happening at the same time as a revolution in
scientific thinking. Careful study of the natural world led to important new discoveries. The
seventeenth century saw the development of scientific thinking on an entirely new scale.
Francis Bacon was known for his work on scientific method. With idea and experiment
following one after the other, eventually the whole natural world would be understood. The
British have remained at the front of experiment and research ever since.

Industrial revolution

Several influences came together at the same time to revolutionise Britain's industry: money,
labour, a greater demand for goods, new power, and better transport. In 1769, James Watt
made a greatly improved with the invention of the Steam Engine, an agricultural machine that
turned water into energy. This invention led to a rapid rise in industrialization and urban
growth. One invention led to another and increased production in one area led to increased
production in others. Other basic materials of the industrial revolution were cotton and
woollen cloth, which were popular abroad.

By the early eighteenth century simple machines had already been invented for basic jobs.
They could make large quantities of simple goods quickly and the "mass production" became
possible for the first time. Each machine carried out one simple process, which introduced the
idea of "division of labour" among workers. This was to become an important part of the
industrial revolution. Increased iron production made it possible to manufacture new
machinery for other industries.

Riots occurred led by the unemployed who had been replaced in factories by machines. In
1799 some of these rioters known as Luddites, started to break up the machinery which had
put them out of work. The government supported the factory owners and made the breaking
of machinery punishable by death. The government was afraid of a revolution like the one in
France.

Life in town and country

In 1700 England was still a land of small villages. In the northern areas of England, in
Lancashire and West Yorkshire, and in the West Midlands, the large cities of the future were
only just beginning to grow. By the middle of the century Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham,
Sheffield and Leeds were already large. But such new towns were still treated as villages and so
had no representation in Parliament.

All the towns smelled bad. Streets were used as lavatories and the dirt was seldom removed.
In fact people added to it, leaving in the streets the rubbish from the marketplace and from
houses. The towns were centres of disease. As a result only one child in four in London lived to
become an adult. It was the poor who died youngest. It was hardly surprising that poor people
found comfort in drinking alcohol and in trying to win money from card games. Quakers,
shocked by the terrible effects of gin drinking, developed the beer industry in order to replace
gin with a less damaging drink.

During the eighteenth century, efforts were made to make towns healthier. Streets were built
wider. So that carriages drawn by horses could pass each other. After 1760 many towns asked
Parliament to allow them to tax their citizens in order to provide social services, such as street
cleaning and lighting. Each house owner had to pay a local tax, the amount or "rate" of which
was decided by the local council or corporation.

Catholics and Jews were still not allowed into Parliament, but they were all able to belong to
the town councils that were now being set up. Soon London and the other towns were so
clean and tidy that they became the wonder of Europe. There were four main classes of
people in eighteenth-century towns: the wealth y merchants; the ordinary merchants and
traders; the skilled craftsmen; and the large number of workers who had no skill and who
could not be sure of finding work from one day to another.

The rich

Social conditions were probably better than in any other country in Europe. To foreigners, used
to the absolute power of the king and his nobles, English law seemed an example of perfect
justice, even if it was not really so. It was difficult to see a clear difference between the
aristocracy, the gentry and the middle class of merchants. Most classes mixed freely together.

However, the difference between rich and poor could be very great. The duke of Newcastle,
for example; had an income of £ 100,000 each year. The workers on his lands were lucky if
they were paid more than £15 a year.

The comfortable life of the gentry must have been dull most of the time. The men went
hunting and riding, and carried out "improvements" to their estates. Women’s lives were
more boring; although during the winter there were frequent visits to London, where dances
and parties were held. But even the richest women's lives were limited by the idea that they
could not take a share in more serious matters. They were only allowed to amuse themselves.

The countryside

Between 1790 and 1850 hundreds of thousands of Highlanders lost their old way of life so that
their chiefs could make a profit from the land. Many Highlanders, men, women and children,
lived poor on the streets of Glasgow. Others went to begin a new life, mainly in Canada, where
many settled with other members of their clan. A smaller number went to Australia in the
nineteenth century. Clan society in the Highlands had gone forever.

In England the countryside changed even more than the towns in the eighteenth century. Most
farming at the beginning of the century was still done as it had been for centuries. Each village
stood in the middle of three or four large fields, and the villagers together decided what to
grow, although individuals continued to work on their own small strips of land.

During the eighteenth century most of this land was enclosed. One main cause of these
enclosures was that a number of the greater landlords, including the aristocracy, had a great
deal of money to invest. Their reason was that farming had become much more profitable.
From the mid-seventeenth century there had been a number of improvements in farming, and
a growth of interest in farming method.

Augustan Literature

The Augustan literature is a style of British literature produced during the reigns of Queen
Anne, King George I, and George II. It was a literary period that featured not only the
development of the novel, reaching a huge number of readers, but also exhibited an
exceptionally bold political writings in all genres.

Letters and Diaries

To begin with the literature aspect of Augustan to Gothic era we shall start with the poet
writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s letters in the first part of
the century were famous. Montagu repeatedly turned to the forms of Augustan verse—satires,
verse epistles, mock epics, translations, essays, ballads, and songs—to respond to events
around her and, indirectly, to give public form to her private feelings. Later, Lord Chesterfield’s
Letters to his son, published in 1774 after both of them were dead, became very popular as a
book of good manners.

Another kind of writing which began to grow in importance in the eighteenth century was
diaries. The diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn are the ones that highlighted this period.
Pepys’s diary, which described the period between 1660 and 1669, probably intended for his
eye alone, was all written in cipher (a type of shorthand recently invented and not widely
known) and was not deciphered until 1825.

With respect to John Evelyn, his diary was published in 1818. Unlike Pepys, Evelyn appears not
to have composed regularly each day; on occasions he wrote his entry some time after the
event and even added to it at a later date.

Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn diaries give details of daily life at the time of the Restoration
which novels and plays cannot give.

Journalism and Criticism

With the growth of the new middle class, there was an increase demand of the printed word,
and writing became a profession. Authors were now professional, full-time writers, not only of
books and plays. Many famous newspapers and magazines were started at this time, and most
of the great writers of the time were also journalists.

The journalism of the early eighteenth century took the opinions and fashions of the capital
city, London, to the whole nation. This was an important change in ways of thinking, especially
outside the capital. A parallel growth in the communication of information and ideas
happened in Scotland, from its capital city Edinburgh. This was the time of the Scottish
Enlightenment. Scotland in the eighteenth century was a centre of philosophical writings by,
for example, David Hume, and the economist Adam Smith.
 London, however, was more concerned with society and manners, and with the gossip of the
coffee-houses, which were the centre of London’s literary life in the first half of the century.

The Tatler and The Spectator. The idea of a magazine which represents the tastes of
‘gentlemen’ was continued in these magazines. The magazines were therefore important in
expressing ideas and a point of view, setting standards of taste and judgement, and influencing
the values of the society they wrote for and about. The tone was not too intellectual or
highbrow. It can be seen as comfortable and safe writing, and as a model of politeness and
good taste.

Richard Steele also started The Guardian and ran The Englishman, The Lover and The Theatre.
Steele was also a dramatist, and he attacked the excesses of Restoration comedy. His The
Conscious Lovers (1722) was very successful for many years. It is a complete break from the
spirit of Restoration drama, introducing the kind of feeling and polite behaviour which were to
rule the theatre for the next century.

Essays of criticism were also becoming popular. John Dryden had written several important
critical pieces, and magazines often caused a lot of controversy when literary or political
arguments were printed in their pages. Many writers and editors had to pay fines or were even
sent to prison for expressing their opinions too strongly. Daniel Defoe was sent to prison for
writing a pamphlet ‘The Shortest Way with the Dissenters’ (dissenters=protesters) (1702)

The major critic of the eighteenth century was Dr Samuel Johnson. He made his name with the
publication of his Dictionary of the English Language (1755). After the success of the
dictionary he wrote a preface to Shakespeare (1765). This was one of the first critical essays on
Shakespeare, and the beginning of a major tradition. He was the first of a long line of critics
who discussed and judged writers and their place in the growing tradition of English writing.

One of the most important books of the second half of the eighteenth century was a history
Edward Gibbon’s huge The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788).
It was a controversial book, looking at the greatness of Rome, but also how that greatness
ended.

All this professional writing shows a wide market for opinions and discussions of all kinds of
subjects. Almost all the writers of the time could not be professional, full-time authors, and
many of them worked very hard at their journalism: they wrote for money, and journalism
gave them a more or less regular income. In a society where money was so important,
authorship was a profession just like many others.

•THE RISE OF THE NOVEL. (THE MOST IMPORTANTE LITERAY GENRE OF THE AUGUSTAN
PERIOD)

A novel may be defined as a work of narrative fiction, usually in prose. Prose is a speech or
writing which is written in separate paragraphs. It is not poetry and neither has rhyme nor
meter.

In Britain the novel became as a distinct literary form in the eighteenth century.
There were some literary influences that are said to have helped the novel’s development such
as journalism, biography diaries and letter writing.

There were also some social influences that helped the novel’s development: The Puritanism
enormously influenced the writers of novels. The rise of the middle class. The Education that
was not only available for the upper classes. There was a growing desire to be opened up to
new worlds. The scientific philosophy also influenced the rise of the novel.

With respect to the main authors which were part of the rise novel, we shall begin with Aphra
Behn. In fact, women have always written a lot of fiction, and in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth century they were also the greatest part of the readership. Aphra Behn wrote
a novel in the form of letters called “Love letters between a Nobleman and his sister” (1683).
This novel became popular sixty years later, when the epistolary novel was at the top of
literary fashion. Aphra Behn’s most famous novel is Oroonoko (1688), sometimes called the
first philosophical novel in English. It is a strong protest against the trade in slaves and against
the power of colonialism, just at the time when such a power was growing. Aphra Behn was
not afraid of controversy; in fact, she seemed to enjoy her role as a speaker for women’s
right and sexual freedom in a society which was controlled by men.

In connection to ‘controversial women’ there was Mary de la Riviere Manley. Another

woman who wrote a lot a novels which were popular in her own lifetime, yet they were
ignored by the critics. She wrote a political satire using false names for real characters, to tell
scandalous stories about political and personal enemies. Mrs Manley was traditional and
royalist in her politics, but very liberal in her views on the role of women in society. So her
novels also show the struggle between the sexes. One of her political novels is The new
Atalantis (1709) which handled many “objectionable” themes such as rape, incest and
homosexuality.

At first, and for more than a century, the novel was not well regarded by serious critics.
Poetry was a higher form of literary art. But there was a growing market among the middle
class, especially among ladies, for novels, and this market grew during the eighteenth century
until the novel reached a huge readership all over the world.

Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift, followed a little later by Samuel Richardson and Henry
Fielding, are the most important male names in the rise of the novel.

Daniel Defoe was a journalist and pamphleteer. He published Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
in 1719, often thought as the first English novel. The story is about a man who is wrecked on
a desert island for twenty years (Defoe identified with the hero but had never visited a desert
island himself). The story is a description of the sensible and methodical way in which he
struggles to build up a life for himself. Defoe’s technique in most of his novels is to use a first-
person narrator, an “I” who tells the story as if it had really happened.

Most of novelists of the eighteenth century described the bad side of life using adjectives
such as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. But the stories end with a happy ending to
show that it was all worthwhile.
 Jonathan Swift is considered as the first ‘satire’ writer. In his published pamphlet, Swift
attacked the way the English used the Irish for profit, leaving them poor and hungry. In other
words, Jonathan Swift wrote a number of pamphlets in order to support oppressed Irish. His
Gulliver’s Travels, which is a novel written in four parts, is a very angry use of satire against
what he saw as being wrong with the world. But when it was published in 1726, the novel was
considered as a kind of children’s story, a fable, rather than the strong social criticism which it
really is. Swift’s writing was the most original satire of its day, and he is a poet of great range: a
poet who could use everyday language in a way that now seems very modern, and a writer
who commented on society but was not understood. Another novel written by Jonathan Swift
is A Modest Proposal (1729).

Samuel Richardson met with enormous approval from his readers. He was a publisher, and
thought of printing a guide to letter-writing for middle-class ladies. This idea became the novel
Pamela (1740) which is written in epistolary form. ‘Pamela’, sometimes called the first true
modern novel because of the realistic representation of the day-today behaviour and
psychology of the main characters. In his novel Pamela Richardson created the typical heroine
of the times: Pamela is poor, but a good woman, and in her letters the readers can follow all
her problems with Mr B who wants to marry her. The novel has many themes: rape, strong
men and weak women, the power of sex, the social need for good behaviour.

Many readers have found the moral tone of Richardson’s novels difficult to accept, but in his
own time he was very successful. Richardson wished to instruct readers ‘how to think and
act justly and prudently in the common concerns of human life.

Henry Fielding stopped writing for the theatre in 1737, and turned to the novel. Henry Fielding
disliked what he saw as Richardson’s self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. Fielding wrote his first
novel ‘Apology for the life of Mrs. Shamela Andrew’ which was a parody of the moral tone of
Richardson’s Pamela. Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749) are his best- known
novels. Fielding called his novels ‘comic epics in prose’ and shows the strength and weakness
of human nature. Of course, the men always have rather more freedom than women, and
there is always a moral.

The novel went from narrative to political, from romantic to comic, from social to satirical, the
novel already had a wide range of themes and styles by 1750.

The novel after 1750

After Richardson and Fielding the novel had become a rich and varied genre. In the next fifty
years it moved in several quite different new directions. Charlotte Lennox wrote The Life of
Harriot Stuart in 1750 and The Female Quixote in 1752. She concentrates on female
experience from a female point of view, as her titles imply. Here the man rather than the
woman is the victim.

The most unusual novel of the time was Tristram Shandy (1760/67) by Laurence Sterne.
Traditionally, a plot had a beginning, middle and an end, in that order. Sterne was the first to
change this order. He wanted to show how foolish is to force everything into the traditional
plot.
Henry Mackenzie’s novel The Man of Feeling (1771) and its concentration on emotion changed
the way readers felt and thought about emotion for many years.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the novel took a new direction. Horace Walpole’s
The Castle of Otranto (1764) started the fashion for the Gothic, and the horror novel was born.
The story is set in medieval times, with castles and ghosts, appearances and disappearances,
and a whole range of frightening effects, which are still popular in story and film. The Gothic
novel developed the imaginative range of genre, going beyond realism and moral instruction.
It explored extremes of feeling and imagination.

Augustan Poetry

When Dryden died, Alexander Pope arrived on the scene with The Rape of the Locke (1712).
Pope’s world is much smaller, the issues exaggerated as if they were of major importance.
Pope is mocking the stupid self-importance of the characters and this is why it is called mock-
heroic.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is perhaps the best-known of the many woman poets of the time.
She was well-known for her letters from Turkey and from Europe, but her poetry is famous
too.

Susannah Centlivre to Clara Reeve, were also poets but they are frequently not mentioned in
histories of literature. The female poets, like Mary Leapor or Hetty Wright, are usually critical
of male superiority in society; perhaps this is why male critics have ignored them.

In the Gothic novel there are themes commonly addressed such as; life, death, immortality
creating a ‘delightful gloom’. Other topics which are mentioned in the Gothic poetry showed
the feeling of being alone and pain or madness.

The most important single poem of the eighteenth century was probably Thomas Gray’s Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard. It celebrates the lives and deeds of the poor, ordinary people
buried in the churchyard in the mall village of Stoke Poges, talking of ‘the short and simple
stories of the poor’ rather than the gloomy enjoyment of the thought of death. He shows a
return to simpler values which is the beginning of the Romantic movement’s return to nature
and to more natural language.