• ISBN13: 9780521641272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: English Literature
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publisher Imprint: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: January 13, 1999
• Pages: 296
• Original Price: GBP 94.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 540 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Jonathan Brody Kramnick's book examines the formation of the English canon over the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century. Kramnick details how the idea of literary tradition emerged out of a prolonged engagement with the institutions of cultural modernity, from the public sphere and national identity to capitalism and the print market. Looking at a wide variety of eighteenth-century critical writing, he analyzes the tensions that inhabited the categories of national literature and public culture at the moment of their emergence.