Reading 1759 investigates the literary culture of a remarkable year in
British and French history, writing, and ideas. Familiar to many as the
British "year of victories" during the Seven Years' War, 1759 was also
an important year in the histories of fiction, philosophy, ethics, and
aesthetics. Reading 1759 is the first book to examine together the range
of works written and published during this crucial year. Offering broad
coverage of the year's work in writing, these essays examine key works
by Johnson, Voltaire, Sterne, Adam Smith, Edward Young, Sarah Fielding,
and Christopher Smart, along with such group projects as the
Encyclopédie and the literary review journals of the mid-eighteenth
century. Organized around a cluster of key topics, the volume reflects
the concerns most important to writers themselves in 1759. This was a
year of the new and the modern, as writers addressed current issues of
empire and ethical conduct, forged new forms of creative expression, and
grappled with the nature of originality itself. Texts written and
published in 1759 confronted the history of Western colonialism, the
problem of prostitution in a civilized society, and the limitations of
linguistic expression. Philosophical issues were also important in 1759,
not least the thorny question of causation; while, in France, state
censorship challenged the Encyclopédie, the central Enlightenment
project. Taking into its purview such texts and intellectual
developments, Reading 1759 puts the literary culture of this singular,
and singularly important, year on the scholarly map. In the process, the
volume also provides a self-reflective contribution to the growing body
of "annualized" studies that focus on the literary output of specific
years.
