The Evolution of English Prose, 1700-1800: Style, Politeness, and Print Culture

At the beginning of the eighteenth century ordinary written English was close to speech; by 1800, people expressed themselves more formally, politely, and precisely. The new "writtenness" of prose coincided with the development of a mature print culture, the rise of women writers, the invention of prescriptive grammars, and a powerful new rhetoric. Carey McIntosh traces these changes and illustrates them with comparisons of work by Defoe and Paine, Swift and Burke, Addison and Johnson, Shaf...