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This chapter has four sections: 1. General and Prose; 2. The Novel; 3. Poetry; 4. Drama. Section 1 is by Katarina Stenke; section 2 is by Bonnie Latimer; section 3 is by Kerri Andrews; section 4 is by Chrisy Dennis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter has four sections: 1. General and Prose; 2. The Novel; 3. Poetry; 4. Drama. Section 1 is by Katarina Stenke; section 2 is by Bonnie Latimer; section 3 is by Kerri Andrews; and section 4 is by Chrisy Dennis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay explores the extent to which women's consent is requisite to marriage in Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison and is a contribution to current critical debate on Richardson's constructions of patriarchal imperatives. The essay focuses on the marriage of a minor character, Miss Mansfield, arguing that her coerced marriage is not an anomaly, but rather an example of a tendency that subtly permeates Grandison. The essay concludes, however, that we cannot read Richardson simplistically as inhibiting women's agency; rather, Miss Mansfield's marriage forms part of a background discourse that participates in contemporary debates on choice, pressure and property in marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alexander Pope‘s dedicatory letter to Arabella Fermor on the publication of the five-canto version of The Rape of the Lock (1714) introduces the poem‘s new cast of sylphs and cites as their origin a French alchemical satire, the abbé de Villars‘s Le Comte de Gabalis (1670). Gabalis, in its various editions and continuations, is not often read nowadays; yet it is an engaging and allusive text. As one of Pope‘s main sources for the sylphs, it deserves re-reading, and this article offers a critical discussion of the relationship between Gabalis and The Rape. In so doing, it (i) suggests that, contrary to Pope's own assertion, Gabalis is not ‘Rosicrucian’ but rather based on the writings of Paracelsus; (ii) identifies how Gabalis adapted Paracelsian elemental theory for its own satiric ends; (iii) considers how the satiric-sexual themes of Gabalis might inform modern critical judgements of The Rape; (iv) comments on the role of the sylphs and representations of women's souls and deaths in the poem. Generally, the article situates Gabalis in relation to Pope's work and argues for The Rape as a highly sexualised piece, linking it to Pope's youthful would-be rakish persona and to Scriblerian satires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article refers to a June 1753 letter written by English author Samuel Richardson to British poet Elizabeth Carter, as well as Carter's letter in response, which discuss the British Jewish naturalization Act of 1753. Richardson refers to a "little paper" which he included with his letter to Carter. The article argues that this was a pamphlet attributed to Philip Carteret Webb having the abbreviated title "The Bill, Permitting Jews to be Naturalized by Parliament, Having Been Misrepresented in the London Gazetteer, of Friday the 18th May."