Editors' Note

With the retirement of Robert P. Maccubbin, Eighteenth-Century Life, the journal he edited for twenty-four years, now moves to the University of Wyoming, although Professor Maccubbin has generously agreed to continue as book-review editor, largely, we think, because his office is crammed with new books for which he has yet to find reviewers. It is instructive to read the statement Bob made in his first issue, because it applies as much today as it did in October 1980:

Our subject is implicit in our title—the life of the eighteenth century—social life, political life, literary life, intellectual life; the life of the great and the obscure; the life of the mind and of the body; life in France, in America, in Germany, in England; life throughout the western world. It is no longer necessary either to define or defend the interdisciplinary approach to eighteenth-century life.

In practice, this meant scholarship on literature, of course, a central concern, since Eighteenth-Century Life has always been housed in English departments, but also on art, architecture, biography, economics, geography, history, music, philosophy, politics, religion, science, travel, and so on. In fact, Eighteenth-Century Life was doing cultural studies before there was such a thing as cultural studies. Since transferring the journal, we have received essays on Burney, Defoe, Dryden, Haywood, and Johnson, but also on such topics as balloons, bluestockings, cross-dressing pirates, educational manuals, fireworks, legal wrangling, Methodism, murder, orphanages, paintings, performing insects, plague, pockets, prisons, racial theory, tea-drinking, and wigs (see current issue). It is clear from such a list that scholars in the field have a strong sense of Eighteenth-Century Life's interests, or, going back to the statement of purpose, a strong sense of what constitutes "eighteenth-century life."

We hope to continue this tradition, and we intend to continue several other features Maccubbin has developed over the years. First, we will frequently run an extensive and eclectic books received section, a good resource for discovering useful material well before it appears in bibliographies. Second, we will continue publishing review essays, where a number of similar works are gathered together to give an overview of the current state of the art in a given field. Third, to keep readers apprised of things of interest that go beyond scholarship, we intend to keep running forums covering modern novels set in the eighteenth century, television and movie adaptations of eighteenth-century novels, pertinent art exhibitions, theatrical productions, concerts, recordings, and so forth. Finally, from time to time, as opportunities present themselves, we will publish special issues devoted to specific topics (if you have any suggestions for review essays, special issues, or innovative approaches, please contact us).

Just as we welcome a wide variety of topics, so do we welcome a similar range of methodologies, with this caveat: we do not welcome critical jargon. Since we deal in a period that has such prose stylists as Dryden at the beginning, Gibbon in the middle, and Jane Austen at the end (yes, this is the long eighteenth century), it would seem a crime for us knowingly to publish anything less than good writing. It is because of its oftentimes lively prose, and its wealth of subjects, that Eighteenth-Century Life has become that rarity among academic journals: a scholarly journal with genuinely high standards that people actually enjoy reading—and we stress "enjoy"—rather than a journal that sits on the shelf and is consulted only when necessary. At its best, Eighteenth-Century Life should remind readers why they got interested in this fascinating period in the first place.