This book brings fresh perspectives on popular culture in eighteenth-century England. Covering the less examined time span between 1700 and 1780, it sheds light on a variety of subjects that attest to the bourgeoning of early modern capitalism, which caused a radical change in the social identity and values of the elite, the middling sort and the vulgus. From urban life, popular recreations, the reformation of the Julian calendar and the emergence of the socio-cultural phenomenon of the mob to the popularity of the almanac, the relationship between oral and print culture, the perception of the “Other” in the empire and, finally, the relevance of popular culture to the literary forms of the time, this study reveals the ongoing interaction between “high” and “low” through the prism of literary and cultural history.

Dragoş Ivana