Is there a whig canon? the case of susanna centlivre

Abstract

In his bookProfessional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670–1740, the author attempted a historical sociology of a period's imaginative writing in terms of the marketplace and incipient professionalism. Very recently, however, and partly in response to his argument, attempts have been made to refigure the history of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century poetry in terms of “Tory” and “Whig” traditions, having their points of departure in 1660 and 1688 respectively. His account is thought to overemphasise the market to the exclusion of continuing patronage links supporting a group of Whig writers that he is considered to neglect or undervalue. In this article, the author argues that the Whig/Tory polarisation is an oversimplification of a much more complex dimension of “cultural” rather than “partisan” politics, and uses the writing career of an undoubted Whig, Susanna Centlivre, to illustrate the point that she has far more in common culturally with her so-called “Tory” opponents than with the Whig writers who might be considered her natural allies. Those who valorise this group of Whig writers appear to valorise uncritically the underpinning assumptions of a Whig interpretation of history, in ways that the author sees as problematic.