-
“Behindhand with their Countrymen”: Literary Culture and Economic Decline in Eighteenth-Century Exeter
- Eighteenth-Century Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 51, Number 4, Summer 2018
- pp. 417-436
- 10.1353/ecs.2018.0011
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Abstract:
This article investigates the history of writing and printing in eighteenth-century Exeter. Writing in Exeter flourished during the same decades in which the city itself underwent a serious decline and local authors, proud of belonging to what had, historically, been one of Britain’s greatest cities, had to operate within a marketplace dominated by a metropolitan literary culture contemptuous of provincialism. Surveying the literary works written and printed in eighteenth-century Exeter, this article explores the ways in which these authors addressed the creative and logistical challenges which confronted eighteenth-century writers who lived and worked within ‘provincial’ contexts.