Radicalism in British Literary Culture 1650-1830

This study examines the radical tradition in British literary culture from the English Revolution to the French Revolution. It charts continuities between the two periods and examines the recuperation of ideas and texts from the earlier period in the 1790s and beyond. The volume argues that the radical agendas of the mid-seventeenth century intended to change society fundamentally did not disappear throughout the long eighteenth-century only to be resuscitated at its close. Rather through close textual analysis these essays indicate a more continuous transmission.