First published in 1949, this book presents the collected works of eighteenth-century poet, Christopher Smart. Smart's character and his poetry are difficult to disentangle - both egocentric, given to exhibitionism, childish, oscillating between the extremes of self-belittlement and self-glorification. Few other poets, however, match him in directness of expression. It is the aim of this edition to present as complete a text as possible in the way that Smart himself would have seen it and, in giving some account of the poet's life, to link his poetry with it. The book will be of interest to students of eighteenth-century literature and history.

First published in 1949, this book presents the collected works of Christopher Smart, the eighteenth-century poet whose life has an attraction for the curioso of literature. There is the early marriage with Anne Vane, his secret marriage, eighteenth-century Cambridge life, the intrigues of Grub Street, and, finally, insanity and confinement in an asylum. Smart remains a strange, enigmatic figure, repulsive or attractive according to the temperament of the investigator. His poetry is not easy to disentangle from his character – egocentric, given to exhibitionism, childish, oscillating between the extremes of self-belittlement and self-glorification; but he has his own claim to fame. Few other poets match him in directness of expression. He is a poet with the eye of a painter, developed in an unusually high degree. He has a stereoscopic vision which makes the object leap to the eye, the painter’s sense of physical texture and his skill in composing a picture. Then again, there is his versatility. He practised almost every kind of poetry and gave to each kind his own personal inflection. It is the aim of this edition to present as complete a text as possible in the way that Smart himself would have seen it and, in giving some account of the poet’s life, to link his poetry with it. The book will be of interest to students of eighteenth-century literature and history.

A surprisingly large number of English poets have either belonged to a secret society, or been strongly influenced by its tenets. One of the best known examples is Christopher Smart’s membership of the Freemasons, and the resulting influence of Masonic doctrines on A Song to David. However, many other poets have belonged to, or been influenced by not only the Freemasons, but the Rosicrucians, Gormogons and Hell-Fire Clubs. First published in 1986, this study concentrates on five major examples: Smart, Burns, William Blake, William Butler Yeats and Rudyard Kipling, as well as a number of other poets. Marie Roberts questions why so many poets have been powerfully attracted to the secret societies, and considers the effectiveness of poetry as a medium for conveying secret emblems and ritual. She shows how some poets believed that poetry would prove a hidden symbolic language in which to reveal great truths. The beliefs of these poets are as diverse as their practice, and this book sheds fascinating light on several major writers.

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Poetry 1660-1780, originally published in 1981, considers poetry written between 1660 and 1780, a period which, although largely recovered from its nineteenth-century reputation, still attracts widely varying critical responses. Abandoning the old labels such as ‘neoclassicism’, ‘romanticism’ and ‘sensibility’, the author focuses on descriptions of genres and their formal elements and traces the broader patterns of literary and historical change running through the period. Eric Rothstein describes different poetic modes- panegyric, satire, pastoral and topographical poetry, the epistle, and the ode- to suggest their aesthetical possibilities as well as their process of change. He also considers style and the uses of the past, topics which have often caused particular problems for the students of the period. What becomes clear is the extraordinary originality, flexibility and power with which Restoration and eighteenth-century poets handles the stylistic assumptions and the body of poems they inherited and employed in their own works.