Literature, Gender and Politics in Britain during the War for America, 1770-1785

Cambridge University Press, 2011-11-14. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Very Good. 9x6x0. Fine hardcover in Very Good dust jacket. Full bound black cloth boards with gilt lettering to spine; binding is straight and square; no writing or markings of any kind. Minor surface and edgewear to dust jacket. Review copy with publisher's slip laid in, requesting three copies of review, and showing list price of the book at $95. From the front flap: "The successful performance of a particular kind of masculinity was critical to political life during the eighteenth century, when men who claimed membership of the public sphere were expected to be men of honour as well as property. By the 1770s, however, the transformative effects of commerce and the claims of politeness complicated older certainties. Robert Jones examines how the parliamentary Opposition and their literary allies responded to political pressures and the emergencies of a disastrous war by fashioning a new mode of politics based on a more flexible range of masculinities. Basing his study on close readings of Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the trials of General Burgoyne and Admiral Keppel, and the Whig appropriation of Thomas Chatterton, Jones explores how Opposition discourse risked the charge of effeminacy in order to fuse the languages of honour and sensibility.