1650-1850: Ideas, Aethetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era takes a focused but multidisciplinary approach to the "long eighteenth century," the two hundred years during which the writers and artists explored, developed, and represented a complex program of modernization or "Enlightenment." Covering a period that begins with the revolutionary thought of Thomas Hobbes and the surprising establishment of a Commonwealth government and that ends with the careers of William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, 1650-1850 publishes essays treating the aesthetic and philosophical side of this period of deep social transformation. This annual includes studies on the literature, philosophy, theology, art, music, architecture, and personalities of the period. It publishes many essays on British topics but also includes studies from various cultures, from Vietnam and Romania to Peru and the arctic. It seeks to discover connections among the various arts and intellectual pursuits and also to provide a venue for specialized studies not suitable for less experimental journals. 1650-1850 always includes fifteen to twenty extended reviews, reviews that examine major scholarly studies and editions in detail and with robust honesty.

Contents includes:

Beverly Jerold, Dilettante and Amateur: Our Evolving Language
Richard Sharp, Aspects of High Churchmanship in Eighteenth-Century England: Charles Wheatly (1686-1742) and the Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer
James E. Evans, "The Splendour of Our Golden Age": The Duchess of Mazarin and Epicurean Voluptuousness in Late Stuart England
Susan Lydon, Savage Europeans and Gentlemanly Savages: Capitalism and Blurred Identity in Robinson Crusoe
Keely McCarthy, The Problem of Cultural Reproduction in Gulliver's Travels
James E. May, Contemporary Reception and Reputation of Edward Young's Love of Fame
Al Coppola, The Secret History of Eliza Haywood's Works: The Early Novel and the Book Trade
Frieda Koeninger, Female, French, and Alone: The Case of Luisa de Dufressi before the Mexican Inquisition during the Times of Viceroy Bernardo de Galvez (Hero of the Battle of Baton Rouge and Other Notable Feats)
James J. Kirschke and Scott Grapin, From Colonist to Revolutionary: John Adams (1735-1826)
Francesca Saggini, "The Story Told Well": Thought, Feeling, and Speech in Jane Austen's Proposal Scenes
Sharon Worley, Philipp Otto Runge and the Semiotic Language of Nature and Patriotism