The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century

John Brewer's landmark book brings to life the rich cultural life of eighteenth-century England. He describes how literature, painting, music, and the theater related to a public increasingly avid for them; how artists used, or were used by, publishers, plagiarists, impresarios, and managers; and how contemporary ideas of taste combined with patriotic fervor and shrewdly managed commerce to create a vibrant, dynamic national culture. "A magnificent achievement. . . . Enormous in its scope, astute in its choices of examples, learned in its resources, but written with an almost unfailing lucidity and accessibility." -David A. Bell, *New Republic* "Brewer takes us on a grand tour of the exciting, fluid, often raucous world of the 18th-century arts. . . . A brilliantly illustrated social history." -T. H. Breen, *New York Times Book Review* "Every so often a work of intellectual history comes along that reinvigorates the common reader's interest in the past. . . . Exhilarating. . . . No one interested in modern intellectual history should miss it." -Michael Dirda, *Washington Post*