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Samuel Richardson [ Art and Literature ]

… Abstract This entry shows how Richardson, through his writing and reading practices, fashioned links with his readers and created a society of writers and readers based on … qualities of the heart and mind. People > Art and Literature Keywords Samuel Richardson Writing and reading practices Letter Epistolary sociability Friendship Sentiment Heart and mind Although Samuel Richardson was a reserved, taciturn man … him to promote sociability through the creation of a society of writers and readers. For one thing, in his Familiar Letters 1 , he gave his readers practical advice on how to become a sociable people and behave as such, what company to …

William Wordsworth, the worldly recluse [ Art and Literature ]

… People > Art and Literature Keywords Solitude French Revolution Domesticity Politics Napoleon Poet Laureate In a letter of 27 October 1818 to Richard Woodhouse, John Keats famously distanced himself from ‘the wordsworthian or … that sociability holds in his life and works. Sociability serves at once as a poetic resource, a concept in his prose writings, and a way of mapping his career. During the intellectual and political ferment of the 1790s, Wordsworth … participating directly in the pamphlet war that was then raging in Britain: he wrote, but did not publish, the vitriolic Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (1793), in which he defended the French Revolution in the wake of the Terror; in the …