![]() The author introduces the chaos of a literary auction in a London coffee house, the endless scheming for funds and favour within the Royal Academy and the life of self-gratification led by the Dilettantes. ![]() The reader meets figures from all strata of 18th-century English society including: the novelist Samuel Richardson the engraver and political radical, Thomas Bewick the composer John Marsh Dr Johnson Sancho, the Duke of Montagu's black footman Anna Larpent, the censor of books and plays and the mysterious "poetic milkwoman of Bristol". Brewer’s most recent book is The American Leonardo: A Tale of Obsession, Art and Money (Oxford University Press, 2009). The book blends details from little-known sources with a series of character portraits to present a picture of a flourishing culture. It questions how it was that at the end of the 17th century, there was almost no native English tradition in painting, the theatre, music or publishing, yet by the end of the 18th century, England had one of Europe's richest cultures. This work explores English culture and its origins. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century Brewer, John: New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux 695 pp. ![]()
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