Aaron Hill The Muses' Projector, 1685-1750

by Gerrard, Christine

• ISBN13: 9780198183884
• ISBN10: 0198183887
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-09
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

During his lifetime Aaron Hill was one of the most lively cultural patrons and brokers on the London literary scene - an image hard to square with the company of undistinguished scribblers to which Pope relegated him in the Dunciad. Aaron Hill: The Muses' Projector, 1685-1750, the firstbiography of this fascinating figure for nearly a century, aims to correct the distorted picture of the Augustan cultural scene which Pope passed down to posterity. Hill deliberately confronted Pope in his attempt to free poetry's sublime and visionary potential from the stale platitudes ofneo-classical convention. An early champion of women poets, he also enjoyed close relationships with Eliza Haywood and Martha Fowke, and brought his three writing daughters Urania, Astrea, and Minerva into close contact with his lifelong friend the novelist Samuel Richardson. In 1711 Hill, as stagemanager and librettist, introduced Handel to the English stage, as well as lobbying tirelessly for innovation in the eighteenth-century theatre. His entrepreneurial energies, directed at both commercial and cultural projects, mirror the zeitgeist of early Hanoverian Britain.

Author Biography

Christine Gerrard is Fellow and Tutor in English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Her publications include The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Poetry, Politics, and National Myth, 1725-1742 (OUP 1994) and, with Douglas Fairer, Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell 1999). She is editor of the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	x
Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	1	(6)
1. Hackney Apollo, 1685-1711	7	(32)
2. Schemes and Projects, 1712-1721	39	(22)
3. 'Heavenly Clio': The Making of the Hillarian Circle, 1720-1723	61	(20)
4. The 'Scorpion Haywood': The Breaking of the Hillarian Circle, 1723-1725	81	(21)
5. The Plain Dealer and the Religious Sublime, 1724-1728	102	(20)
6. 'Dipt in the Dirt': Pope, Cultural Politics, and Grub Street, 1728-1733	122	(23)
7. Hill and the London Stage, 1731-1736	145	(27)
8. Hill, Voltaire, and Prince Frederick, 1733-1738	172	(22)
9. 'Essex Man': Richardson and the Hill Family, 1738-1750	194	(32)
10. Patriotism, Fame, and Death, 1743-1750	226	(22)
Bibliography	248	(11)
Index	259