Impolite Periodicals

Comprised of thirteen chapters from specialists on eighteenth-century periodical culture, "Impolite Periodicals" challenges longstanding assumptions about the periodical’s association with politeness, not simply arguing that periodicals could be impolite, but also identifying and elucidating manifestations of impoliteness across a variety of contexts and interpretative communities. The idea that eighteenth-century periodicals were defined by and dedicated to the promotion of politeness has been gradually questioned in recent decades, not least due to increasing scepticism about the stability and coherence of politeness itself as a framing concept for the period’s social changes. Periodicals could be impolite when they overtly flouted rules of decorum or cut against the commercial and political values of the emerging middle class. But they could also be impolite thanks to their very politeness, compelled to articulate the various self-contradictions of a polite agenda, and to anticipate the failure of their ow