Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Reviewing a Genre 2. London's Character 3. Characters of the Age 4. Public Prospects 5. Scottish Variations 6. Federalist Revisions 7. Irving's Knickerbocker in Retrospect Afterword

Urban Enlightenment offers the first literary history of the British periodical essay spanning the entire eighteenth century, and the first to study the genre's development and cultural impact in a transatlantic context.

Richard Squibbs is Assistant Professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago, USA. His articles on eighteenth-century British and early American literature have appeared in ELH, Modern Philology and Huntington Library Quarterly.