Eighteenth-Century British Law and Literature: A Survey of the Field

Abstract

This essay offers a survey of scholarship on eighteenth-century British law and literature, highlighting developments and debates in the field over the past 50 years. The essay begins with a discussion of work on the interplay between the legal and the literary professions, including literary representations of lawyers and legal processes, the uses of narrative and rhetoric in law, and the legal regulation of authorship. The essay then turns to work on literary engagements with legal developments in four areas: property and contract; marriage, family, and sexuality; crime and punishment; and slavery, empire, and human rights. The essay concludes with reflections and suggestions for new work in the field. The essay ultimately seeks to demonstrate the mutual entanglements of law and literature in the long eighteenth century as well as the contributions of eighteenth-century studies to the law-and-literature enterprise.