Mapping Mythologies: Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History

by Marilyn Butler, Heather Glen (Preface)

In this groundbreaking work of revisionary literary history, Marilyn Butler traces the imagining of alternative versions of the nation in eighteenth-century Britain, both in the works of a series of well-known poets (Akenside, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Chatterton, Macpherson, Blake) and in the differing accounts of the national culture offered by eighteenth-century antiquarians and literary historians. She charts the beginnings in eighteenth-century Britain of what is now called cultural history, exploring how and why it developed, and the issues at stake. Her interest is not simply in a succession of great writers, but in the politics of a wider culture, in which writers, scholars, publishers, editors, booksellers, readers all play their parts. For more than thirty years, Marilyn Butler was a towering presence in eighteenth-century and romantic studies, and this major work is published for the first time.

237 pages, Hardcover

First published August 5, 2015

About the author

Marilyn Butler, Lady Butler, FRSL FRSA FBA was a British literary critic. She was Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, from 1993 to 2004, and was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge from 1986 to 1993.

She was educated at Wimbledon High School and St Hilda's College, Oxford.

Her published works include Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries and Jane Austen and the War of Ideas.
Much of her work has been devoted to the career of the Anglo-Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth, including a classic literary biography of Maria Edgeworth and an important collected edition of Edgeworth's works for Pickering & Chatto.

She was married to David Butler; the couple had three sons. In June 2003 she was awarded an honorary degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University. Butler was a Fellow of the British Academy.