Common Ground: Eighteenth-Century English Satiric Fiction and the Poor

Abstract

Introduction: gentle and poor on common ground 1. What you seek is nowhere: the comic novel and lower-class literacy 2. A man who laughs is never dangerous: the gentleman's disposition in A Sentimental Journey 3. The satire of melancholia: Humphry Clinker and the agricultural revolution 4. This dream of fancied sorrow: female affectivity and the labouring poor in Frances Burney's Cecilia Conclusion: labour and satire at the century's end Notes Bibliography Index.