British Law and Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century

The law underwent significant changes in eighteenth-century Britainas jurists and legislators adapted doctrines to fit the needs of anincreasingly commercial, industrial, and imperial society. This volume reveals how legal developments of the period shaped andwere shaped by imaginative writing. Reading canonical and lesserknowntexts from the Restoration to the Romantic era, the chapters explore literary engagements with libel law, plague law, marriage law,naturalization law, the poor laws, the law of slavery and abolition,and the practice of common-law decision-making. The volume also considers the language and form of legal treatises and judicial decisions,as well as recent appropriations of the period's literature andlegal norms by the Christian right. Through these varied case studies, the volume deepens our knowledge of law and literature's mutualentanglements in the long eighteenth century while shedding light onlegal and ethical questions that remain of concern to this day.