This elegantly written book examines the evolution of satirical writing in the long eighteenth century—from Swift and Pope to Byron, Shelley, and Austen—and the social and cultural changes that conditioned it.

“Rawson is himself an Augustan among critics, expressing worlds of scholarship with a pungent and delightful humanism.”—Donald Lyons, New Criterion

“A luxuriant hybrid of keen literary criticism and well-documented cultural history. . . .  This ranging synthesis of a reeling world is mind-expanding for critics and historians, specialists and generalists.”—Kenneth Craven, Scriblerian 

“Rawson’s book shows that there is considerable life and interest left in relatively traditional literary history.”—Charles A. Knight, Eighteenth-Century Studies

“Rawson marshals an army of erudite references from Statius to Mailer to illuminate the major figures: Swift, Pope, Burke, Byron, and Shelley. His conversational style is wide-ranging in the best Augustan essay-mode.”—Laura L. Runge, Albion