Restoration and the 18th Century Editions

  • The Turkish Embassy Letters

    The Turkish Embassy Letters

    In 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s husband Edward Montagu was appointed British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire. Montagu accompanied her husband…

  • The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe

    The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe

    The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe revolve around young women who wish the world would conform to novelistic convention. Unlike most eighteenth-century heroines keen on novel…

  • Gulliver's Travels

    Gulliver’s Travels

    In this narrative of the gullible ship’s doctor Lemuel Gulliver and his extraordinary travels, Jonathan Swift takes readers through a series of apparently child-like fantasy…

  • Paradise Lost

    Paradise Lost

    John Milton’s epic story of cosmic rebellion and the beginning of human history has long been considered one of the greatest and most gripping narratives…

  • Emma Corbett

    Emma Corbett

    Set both in England and in America, Emma Corbett is the moving story of a family torn apart by the American revolutionary war. Edward Corbett…

  • An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

    An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

    Over a series of elegantly written, engaging essays, the Enquiry examines the experiential and psychological sources of meaning and knowledge, the foundations of reasoning about…

  • Travels through France and Italy

    Travels through France and Italy

    Tobias Smollett travelled through Europe with his wife in 1763-65 in a journey designed to recover his mental and physical health after the death of…

  • The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph

    The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph

    The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph was hugely popular in circulating libraries in the years after its publication, and its emotional intensity was often remarked…

  • Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano

    Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano

    When abolitionists Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano published their essays on slavery in the late eighteenth century, they became key participants in one of the…

  • Clarissa - An Abridged Edition

    Clarissa – An Abridged Edition

    This classic novel tells the story, in letters, of the beautiful and virtuous Clarissa Harlowe’s pursuit by the brilliant, unscrupulous rake Robert Lovelace. The epistolary…

  • A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

    A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

    The quintessential novel of sentiment, A Sentimental Journey masquerades as the fragmentary travel journal of Parson Yorick, a whimsical and amorous Englishman abroad. Accompanied through…

  • Amelia

    Amelia

    With its combination of satire and sentiment, its focus on the seedy side of London life, and its unexpected shifts in tone, Amelia has intrigued…

  • Robinson Crusoe

    Robinson Crusoe

    Robinson Crusoe is one of the most famous literary characters in history, and his story has spawned hundreds of retellings. Inspired by the life of…

  • The History of Sandford and Merton

    The History of Sandford and Merton

    Among the earliest novels written about children, for children, The History of Sandford and Merton was enormously popular for a century and a half after…

  • The Basset Table

    The Basset Table

    The Basset Table follows the fortunes of Lady Reveller, who runs a table where her friends play the card game basset, and her struggle to…

  • Roxana

    Roxana

    Almost three hundred years after its first publication, Roxana continues to challenge readers, who, though compelled by Roxana’s story, are often baffled by her complex…

  • The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson

    The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson

    In 1754 the British adventurer, compiler, and novelist Edward Kimber published The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson. Rooted in a tale…

  • Euphemia

    Euphemia

    Charlotte Lennox’s Euphemia, published in 1790 at the end of her professional career, is an extraordinary account of pre-Revolutionary America from a woman’s perspective. Constructed…

  • The History of Pompey the Little

    The History of Pompey the Little

    Pompey the Little, the canine narrator of this story, is a uniquely observant and witty guide to eighteenth-century culture, both high and low. In the…

  • Sophia

    Sophia

    The first novel to be written for serial publication by a major female author, Sophia follows the story of two siblings, the virtuous and well-read…

  • The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

    The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

    In Samuel Johnson’s classic philosophical tale, the prince and princess of Abissinia escape their confinement in the Happy Valley and conduct an ultimately unsuccessful search…

  • The London Jilt

    The London Jilt

    This entertaining novel’s full title, which claims that it will show “All the Artifices and Strategems which the Ladies of Pleasure make use of for…

  • Catharine Trotter Cockburn

    Catharine Trotter Cockburn

    An important thinker who contributed to eighteenth-century debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, Catharine Trotter Cockburn pursued the life of a dramatist and essayist, despite…

  • The Governess

    The Governess

    Published in 1749, the story of Mrs. Teachum and the nine pupils who make up her “little female academy” is widely recognized as the first…