1st Edition

Atlantic Circulations Literature, Reception and Imperial Identities, 1650-1750

By Edward Holberton Copyright 2025
260 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

260 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

260 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Atlantic Circulations investigates literary conversations about empire in the British Atlantic world, c. 1650–1750. Reading texts by Anne Bradstreet, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, and Benjamin Franklin, as well as writing by overlooked authors who deserve more attention, such as the Quaker anti-slavery activist Benjamin Lay and the Black classicist Francis Williams, it asks how literary culture... Read more

1.      Introduction

2.      ‘Readie to passe to the American strand’: Herbert’s The Temple, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor

3.      Reading the Revolution in Ulster and Maryland: William Trail’s Miscellany, 1679-1690

4.      Scotland in the Atlantic World: Literary Responses to the Darien Crisis

5.      The Commercial Atlantic: John Dunton’s ‘A Summer’s Ramble’ and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

6.      Milton and Toleration in the Early Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World: Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, and Benjamin Lay

7.      The Barbados Gazette and the Lyrics of Martha Fowke Sansom

8.      James Thomson’s The Seasons, British Union, and the Empire of the Seas

9.      Conclusion

Biography

Edward Holberton is Associate Professor of Early Modern English Literature at the University of Bristol, UK. His previous publications include Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions (2009) and, as co-editor (with Martin Dzelzainis), The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell (2019).