It explores the alleys and garrets of Grub Street- rummages the shelves of bookshops and libraries- peers through printsellers shop windows and into artists studios- and slips behind the scenes at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Its purpose is to show how literature- painting- music and the theatre were communicated to a public increasingly avid for them. John Brewers enthralling book explains how this happened and recreates the world in which the great works of English eighteenth-century art were made. By the dawn of the nineteenth century they were all aprt of the cultural life of the nation. In 1660- there were few professional authors- musicians and painters- no public concert series- galleries- newspaper critics or reviews. It charts the growth of a literary and artistic world fostered by publishers- theatrical and musical impresarios- picture dealers and auctioneers- and presented to th public in coffee-houses- concert halls- libraries- theatres and pleasure gardens. The Pleasures of the Imagination examines the birth and development of English high culture in the eighteenth century.
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