Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture

by Mark Knights

Overview

In this original and illuminating study, Mark Knights reveals how the political culture of the eighteenth century grew out of earlier trends and innovations. Arguing that the period 1675-1720 needs to be seen as the second stage of a seventeenth-century revolution that ran on until c.1720, the book traces the development of the public as an arbiter of politics, the growth of a national political culture, the shift towards a representative society, a crisis of public discourse and credibility, and a political enlightenment rooted in local and national partisan conflict.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199258338
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/02/2005
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 1.13(d)

About the Author

University of East Anglia, Norwich

Table of Contents

Representation and the Public1.. Introduction2.. Public Politics3.. Petitions and Addresses4.. Informing Public Judgement at the PollsPublic Discourse and Truth5.. The Evolution of Print Culture and the Libels of Public Discourse6.. Truth and Fiction in Age of Party7.. ConsequencesBibliography

Editorial Reviews

"An interesting new book.... The 'new media' of later Stuart Britain were pamphlets and periodicals [and their authors] were the bloggers and citizen journalists of their day, and their influence was far greater (though their audiences were far smaller) than what anybody on the Internet has yet achieved.... Then as now, [the new media] delighted in mocking or even abusive criticism, in part because of the conventions of anonymity. One of Knights's most useful observations is that this was a self-limiting phenomenon."—Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker

"This long and detailed study is well worth reading." —The Scriblerian

From the Publisher