The Common Touch: Popular Literature from 1660 to the Mid-Eighteenth Century, Volume II

Beginning where volume one of The Common Touch leaves off, selections of English popular literature from the Restoration to the mid-years of the eighteenth century are offered in this second and final volume. However, while interest in such traditional literary types as the ballad and chapbook continued unabated in this period, new forms began to emerge, with the popularity of journals and novels reflecting not only a more diversified readership, but also the rise of prose as a medium for public debate and entertainment. With increasing middle-class literacy filtering down to servants and apprentices, moreover, the voices of the destitute and the social outcast could be increasingly heard, marking a shift from high-born to low-born, from town to country and from men to women (and children) – culminating in the Romantic movement at the end of the century.