Augustan literature (sometimes referred to misleadingly as Georgian literature) is a style of British literature produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II in the first half of the 18th century and ending in the 1740s, with the deaths of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, in 1744 and 1745, respectively. It was a literary epoch that featured the rapid development of the novel, an explosion in satire, the mutation of drama from political satire into melodrama and an evolution toward poetry of personal exploration. In philosophy, it was an age increasingly dominated by empiricism, while in the writings of political economy, it marked the evolution of mercantilism as a formal philosophy, the development of capitalism and the triumph of trade.
The chronological boundary points of the era are generally vague, largely since the label's origin in contemporary 18th-century criticism has made it a shorthand designation for a somewhat nebulous age of satire. Samuel Johnson, whose famous A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755, is also "to some extent" associated with the Augustan period. The new Augustan period exhibited exceptionally bold political writings in all genres, with the satires of the age marked by an arch, ironic pose, full of nuance and a superficial air of dignified calm that hid sharp criticisms beneath.
While the period is generally known for its adoption of highly regulated and stylized literary forms, some of the concerns of writers of this period, with the emotions, folk and a self-conscious model of authorship, foreshadowed the preoccupations of the later Romantic era. In general, philosophy, politics and literature underwent a turn away from older courtly concerns towards something closer to a modern sensibility.
Historical context In 1737, Alexander Pope, published Imitations of Horace, commonly known as Epistle to Augustus, that was in fact addressed to King George II (whose name was George Augustus). It seemingly endorsed the notion of his age being like that of Augustus (), when Latin poetry became more mannered, political, and satirical than in the era of Julius Caesar (70s–44 BC). Later, Voltaire and Oliver Goldsmith (in his History of Literature in 1764) used the term "Augustan" to refer to the literature of the 1720s and the 1730s.
Outside poetry, however, the Augustan era is generally known by other names. Partially because of the rise of empiricism and partially because of the self-conscious naming of the age in terms of ancient Rome, two rather imprecise labels have been affixed to the age. One is that it is the age of neoclassicism; the other is that it is the Age of Reason. While neoclassical criticism from France was imported to English letters, the English had abandoned their structures in all but name by the 1720s. Critics disagree over the applicability of the concept of "the Enlightenment" to the literary history of this period. Donald Greene argued forcefully that the age should rather be known as "The Age of Exuberance", and T. H. White made a case for "The Age of Scandal". More recently, Roy Porter put forward the notion of a distinctively "English Enlightenment" to characterise the intellectual climate of the period.
One of the most critical elements of the 18th century was the increasing availability of printed material, both for readers and authors. Books fell in price dramatically and used books were sold at Bartholomew Fair and other fairs. Additionally, a brisk trade in chapbooks and broadsheets carried London trends and information out to the farthest reaches of the kingdom. That was furthered with the establishment of periodicals, including The Gentleman's Magazine and the London Magazine. People in York aware of the happenings of Parliament and the court, but people in London were also more aware than before of the happenings of York. Furthermore, before copyright, pirate editions were commonplace, especially in areas without frequent contact with London. Pirate editions thereby encouraged booksellers to increase their shipments to outlying centres like Dublin, which further increased awareness across the whole realm. That was compounded by the expiry of the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 in 1695, which allowed for provincial printing presses to be established, creating a printing structure that was no longer under government control.
All types of literature were spread quickly in all directions. Newspapers began and even multiplied. Furthermore, the newspapers were immediately compromised, as the political factions created their own newspapers, planted stories and bribed journalists. Leading clerics had their sermon collections printed, which were top selling books. Since dissenting, Establishment and Independent divines were in print, the constant movement of these works helped defuse any region's religious homogeneity and fostered emergent latitudinarianism. Periodicals were exceedingly popular, and the art of essay writing was at nearly its apex. Furthermore, the happenings of the Royal Society were published regularly, and they were digested and explained or celebrated in more popular presses. The latest books of scholarship had "keys", "indexes" and "digests" made of them that could popularise, summarise and explain them to a wide audience. The cross-index, now commonplace, was a novelty in the 18th century, and several persons created indexes for older books of learning to allow anyone to find what an author had to say about a given topic at a moment's notice. Books of etiquette, of correspondence and of moral instruction and hygiene multiplied. Economics began as a serious discipline but did so in the form of numerous "projects" for solving England, Ireland and Scotland's ills. Sermon collections, dissertations on religious controversy, and prophecies, both new and old and explained, cropped up in endless variety. In short, readers in the 18th century were overwhelmed by competing voices. Truth and falsehood sat side by side on the shelves, and anyone could be a published author, just as anyone could quickly pretend to be a scholar by using indexes and digests.
The positive side of the explosion in information was that the 18th century was markedly more generally educated than the centuries before. Education was less confined to the upper classes than it had been in prior centuries so contributions to science, philosophy, economics, and literature came from all parts of the kingdom. It was the first time that literacy and a library were all that stood between a person and education. It was an age of "enlightenment" in the sense that the insistence and drive for reasonable explanations of nature and mankind was a rage. It was an "age of reason" in that it was an age that accepted clear, rational methods as superior to tradition. However, there was a dark side to such literacy as well, which authors of the 18th century felt at every turn, which was that nonsense and insanity were also getting more adherents than ever before. Charlatans and mountebanks were fooling more, just as sages were educating more, and alluring and lurid apocalypses vied with sober philosophy on the shelves. As with the World Wide Web in the 21st century, the democratisation of publishing meant that older systems for determining value and uniformity of view were both in shambles. Thus, it was increasingly difficult to trust books in the 18th century, as books were increasingly easy to make and buy.
Political and religious context
The Restoration period ended with the exclusion crisis and the Glorious Revolution, where Parliament set up a new rule for succession to the British throne that would always prefer Protestantism over consanguinity. That had brought William III and Mary II to the throne instead of James II, and that was codified in the Act of Settlement 1701. James had fled to France from where his son, James Francis Edward Stuart, launched an attempt to retake the throne in 1715. Another attempt was launched by the latter's son Charles Edward Stuart in 1745. The attempted invasions are often referred to as "the 15" and "the 45". When William died, Anne Stuart came to the throne. Anne's reign saw two wars and great triumphs by John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. Marlborough's wife, Sarah Churchill, was Anne's best friend, and many supposed that she secretly controlled the Queen in every respect. With the belief that true power rested in the hands of the leading ministers, the two factions of politics stepped up their opposition to each other, and Whig and Tory were at each other's throats. That weakness at the throne would lead quickly to the expansion of the powers of the party leader in Parliament and the establishment in all but name of the prime minister office in the form of Robert Walpole. When Anne died without a surviving issue, George I, Elector of Hanover, came to the throne. George I spoke poor English, and his isolation from the English people was instrumental in keeping his power relatively irrelevant.
His son, George II, on the other hand, spoke some English and some more French, and his rule was the first full Hanoverian rule in England. By then, the powers of Parliament had silently expanded, and his power was perhaps only equal to that of Parliament.
London's population exploded spectacularly. During the Restoration, it had grown from around 350,000 to 600,000 in 1700 (Old Bailey) (Millwall history). By 1800, it had reached 950,000. Not all of the residents were prosperous, as the inclosure acts had destroyed lower-class farming in the countryside, and rural areas experienced painful poverty. Communities of the country poor were forced to migrate or suffer (see Thompson, Whigs) so young people from the country often moved to London with hopes of achieving success, which swelled the ranks of the urban poor and cheap labour for city employers. It also meant an increase in numbers of criminals, prostitutes and beggars. The fears of property crime, rape and starvation found in Augustan literature should be kept in the context of London's growth and the depopulation of the countryside.
Partially because of the population pressures, property crime became a business both for the criminals and those who fed off of the criminals. Major crime lords like Jonathan Wild invented new schemes for stealing, and newspapers were eager to report crime. Biographies of the daring criminals became popular, which spawned fictional biographies of fictional criminals. Cautionary tales of country women abused by sophisticated rakes (such as Anne Bond) and libertines in the city were popular fare, and they prompted fictional accounts of exemplary women abused (or narrowly escaping abuse).