The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century - John Brewer

The most significant, ambitious and best-selling history books of the year.

How is it that at the end of the 17th century there was almost no native English tradition in painting, theatre, music or publishing, yet by the end of the 18th century England had one of Europe’s richest cultures? This book explains this transformation and gives us a much deeper and many-faceted portrait of English culture in the eighteenth century than we have ever had before

John Brewer’s enthralling book explains the ways in which literature, painting, music and the theatre were communicated to the public; how the roles of writers, painters, musicians and actors changed dramatically; the creation of professional bodies such as the Royal Academy; and artists were used by publishers, impresarios, managers, enthusiasts, copyists, plagiarists and entrepreneurs of all kinds.

The towering figures of the eighteenth century – Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, Handel – are the focus for his discussion of each of their arts; but here too are lesser known figures such as Thomas Bewick the engraver, and others completely unknown since their own day, rescued by Brewer from obscurity.

One of the most illuminating aspects of the book is its range outside London – to Chichester and Salisbury for the life of the musician and composer John Marsh; to Lichfield for the self-aggrandising literary bluestocking Anna Seward; to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for Bewick.