Mentoring in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture

In the first collection devoted to mentoring relationships in British literature and culture, the editor and contributors offer a fresh lens through which to observe familiar and lesser known authors and texts. Employing a variety of critical and methodological approaches, which reflect the diversity of the mentoring experiences under consideration, the collection highlights in particular the importance of mentoring in expanding print culture. Topics include John Wilmot the Earl of Rochesters relationships to a range of role models, John Drydens mentoring of women writers, Alexander Popes problematic attempts at mentoring, the vexed nature of Jonathan Swifts cross-gender and cross-class mentoring relationships, Samuel Richardsons largely unsuccessful efforts to influence Urania Hill Johnson, and an examination of Elizabeth Carter and Samuel Johnsons as co-mentors of one anothers work. Taken together, the essays further the case for mentoring as a globally operative critical concept, not only in the eighteenth century, but in other literary periods as well.