Aaron Hill

Christine Gerrard is Fellow and Tutor in English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Her publications include The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Poetry, Politics, and National Myth, 1725-1742 (OUP 1994) and, with Douglas Fairer, Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell 1999). She is editor of the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry.

• List of Illustrations ; Abbreviations ; Introduction ; 1. Hackney Apollo, 1685-1711 ; 2. Schemes and Projects, 1712-1721 ; 3. 'Heavenly Clio': the making of the Hillarian circle, 1720-1723 ; 4. The 'Scorpion Haywood': the breaking of the Hillarian circle, 1723-1725 ; 5. The Plain Dealer and the religious sublime, 1724-1728 ; 6. 'Dipt in the Dirt': Pope, cultural politics, and Grub Street, 1728-1733 ; 7. Hill and the London stage, 1731-1736 ; 8. Hill, Voltaire, and Prince Frederick, 1733-1738 ; 9. 'Essex man': Richardson and the Hill family, 1733-1738 ; 10. Patriotism, fame, and death, 1743-1750 ; Bibliography

Ms. Gerrard argues a strong case for a Whig style of art that was not necessarily inferior to the satirical mannerism of Pope and his allies.... Her magisterial examination of Hill covers every aspect of his existence, as adventurer (his first work was a travelogue, written at age twenty-three, through the Middle East), married man, father, lover, entrepreneur, financier, politician, and finally valetudinarian.