Aaron Hill The Muses' Projector, 1685-1750 [Hardcover]

Christine Gerrard offers a lively and engaging account of one of the most interesting yet neglected figures in the age of Pope. Theater impresario, poet, and commercial entrepreneur, Aaron Hill enjoyed close relationships with Eliza Haywood and Samuel Richardson, and endured a difficult love-hate frienship with Pope.

List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Hackney Apollo, 1685-1711
2. Schemes and Projects, 1712-1721
3. 'Heavenly Clio': the making of the Hillarian circle, 1720-1723
4. The 'Scorpion Haywood': the breaking of the Hillarian circle, 1723-1725
5. ThePlain Dealerand the religious sublime, 1724-1728
6. 'Dipt in the Dirt': Pope, cultural politics, and Grub Street, 1728-1733
7. Hill and the London stage, 1731-1736
8. Hill, Voltaire, and Prince Frederick, 1733-1738
9. 'Essex man': Richardson and the Hill family, 1733-1738
10. Patriotism, fame, and death, 1743-1750
Bibliography

Ms. Gerrard argues a strong case for a Whig style of art that was not necessarily inferior to the satirical mannerism of Pope and his allies.... Her magisterial examination of Hill covers every aspect of his existence, as adventurer (his first work was a travelogue, written at age twenty-three, through the Middle East), married man, father, lover, entrepreneur, financier, politician, and finally valetudinarian. --Scriberlian

A rewarding book.... Gerrard carefully reconstructs the cultural politics of Grub Street. --Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

Christine Gerrardis Fellow and Tutor in English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Her publications includeThe 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 forthcomingBlackwell Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry.