- Paperback: 722 pages
- Publisher: Fontana Press (1 Nov 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 000255920X
- ISBN-13: 978-0002559201
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 17 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 539,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Review
‘If you want to understand how British culture reinvented itself in the 18th century, read The Pleasures of the Imagination. Like all really original achievements it makes us sharply rethink things we supposed we knew well, but it does so with humour and humanity, and through the text runs Brewer’s remarkable intellect: forceful, lucid and penetrating.’
SIMON SCHAMA
Product Description
The most significant, ambitious and best-selling history books of the year.
How is it that at the end of the 17th century there was almost no native English tradition in painting, theatre, music or publishing, yet by the end of the 18th century England had one of Europe’s richest cultures? This book explains this transformation and gives us a much deeper and many-faceted portrait of English culture in the eighteenth century than we have ever had before
John Brewer’s enthralling book explains the ways in which literature, painting, music and the theatre were communicated to the public; how the roles of writers, painters, musicians and actors changed dramatically; the creation of professional bodies such as the Royal Academy; and artists were used by publishers, impresarios, managers, enthusiasts, copyists, plagiarists and entrepreneurs of all kinds.
The towering figures of the eighteenth century – Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, Handel – are the focus for his discussion of each of their arts; but here too are lesser known figures such as Thomas Bewick the engraver, and others completely unknown since their own day, rescued by Brewer from obscurity.
One of the most illuminating aspects of the book is its range outside London – to Chichester and Salisbury for the life of the musician and composer John Marsh; to Lichfield for the self-aggrandising literary bluestocking Anna Seward; to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for Bewick.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is indeed a masterpiece. The eighteenth century was unquestionably a period in which the arts thrived in Britain, but high culture was nothing new to Europe, particularly in the wake of the Renaissance and Rococo. What made this period and indeed this book special was the exodus of culture from the court to the street. This is Brewer's principal theme; the marriage of mercantilism and mass cultural appeal. The arts had always been the plaything of the monarch and the aristocracy and the artists reliant on them for patronage. Beyond church and court there were few examples to be found, excepting anomalies such as Elizabethan theatre. The reasons for it's explosion were manifold as Brewer elaborates. Literacy rates were on the up, a phenomenon that was intertwined with increasing urbanisation, more schools opened their doors, and cities were the ideal breeding ground for literacy in an age of increasing public works. Although Almanacks and religious pamphlets were stiil the staple fare, the 'Grub Street' publishing industry was flourishing, and although, as the name suggests, impecunious authors and unscrupulous publishers were very much in evidence, a wider readership was fuelling the flowering industry. Libraries were a phenomenon of the eighteenth century, for while print works were increasingly widespread books were expensive. The advent of the library with an annual fee less than the price of a single volume in one swoop fanned the the fire of literary appreciation. Brewer delves also into the painting world : the London of Hogarth that was so familiar to the common man and the foundation and patronage of the Royal Academy. Again the new commercialism is drawn as a major growth factor, for merchants and the wealthy bourgois became the new patrons, eager to commemorate their financial glory. Garrick and Drury Lane; the world of the stage is the other focus of Brewer's attentions who uses the three principal arts to chart the explosion not of high, but popular culture in the climate of an industrialising and mercantile Britain on the verge of Empire. His hands on approach to the period leaves the reader with a sense of a very real age and a very real London brought alive through Brewers' warm, empathic portrait and spectacular illustrations. His final section deviates from his depiction of the age through the principal art forms. Almost apologetically in a book that so lovingly brings that London alive, he provides a survey of provincial Britain and the permeation of culture into the shires. By comparing and contrasting tastes and events we are left with a more robust picture, that of Britain as a whole. The book is magesterially written, dripping with fascinating anecdotes, and bringing into play figures great and small of Hogarth and Johnson's London. Laced with almost an illustration per two pages also reflecting all angles of the cultural scene, this book is the unmissable history both of eighteenth century culture, and changing social values in a changing age. Unmissable
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is indeed a masterpiece. The eighteenth century was unquestionably a period in which the arts thrived in Britain, but high culture was nothing new to Europe, particularly in the wake of the Renaissance and Rococo. What made this period and indeed this book special was the exodus of culture from the court to the street. This is Brewer's principal theme; the marriage of mercantilism and mass cultural appeal. The arts had always been the plaything of the monarch and the aristocracy and the artists reliant on them for patronage. Beyond church and court there were few examples to be found, excepting anomalies such as Elizabethan theatre. The reasons for it's explosion were manifold as Brewer elaborates. Literacy rates were on the up, a phenomenon that was intertwined with increasing urbanisation, more schools opened their doors, and cities were the ideal breeding ground for literacy in an age of increasing public works. Although Almanacks and religious pamphlets were stiil the staple fare, the 'Grub Street' publishing industry was flourishing, and although, as the name suggests, impecunious authors and unscrupulous publishers were very much in evidence, a wider readership was fuelling the flowering industry. Libraries were a phenomenon of the eighteenth century, for while print works were increasingly widespread books were expensive. The advent of the library with an annual fee less than the price of a single volume in one swoop fanned the fire of literary appreciation. Brewer delves also into the painting world : the London of Hogarth that was so familiar to the common man and the foundation and patronage of the Royal Academy. Again the new commercialism is drawn as a major growth factor, for merchants and the wealthy bourgois became the new patrons, eager to commemorate their financial glory. Garrick and Drury Lane; the world of the stage is the other focus of Brewer's attentions who uses the three principal arts to chart the explosion not of high, but popular culture in the climate of an industrialising and mercantile Britain on the verge of Empire. His hands on approach to the period leaves the reader with a sense of a very real age and a very real London brought alive through Brewers' warm, empathic portrait and spectacular illustrations. His final section deviates from his depiction of the age through the principal art forms. Almost apologetically in a book that so lovingly brings that London alive, he provides a survey of provincial Britain and the permeation of culture into the shires. By comparing and contrasting tastes and events we are left with a more robust picture, that of Britain as a whole. The book is magesterially written, dripping with fascinating anecdotes, and bringing into play figures great and small of Hogarth and Johnson's London. Laced with almost an illustration per two pages also reflecting all angles of the cultural scene, this book is the luxurious history both of eighteenth century culture, and changing social values in a changing age. Unmissable
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A wonderful book, well written and with many delightful illustrations. A real pleasure of the imagination.
I would definately recommend this book. It gives a comprehensive insight in to eighteenth century artistic life and culture.
I would definately recommend this book. It gives a comprehensive insight in to eighteenth century artistic life and culture.
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