2011/04/15 by J. Batt, Jennifer Batt
Arts and Humanities · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Literature: history, themes, analysis #Financial Crisis of the 21st Century #Historical Art and Culture Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/res/hgr020
by jennifer batt 'The Midsummer Wish' is a rather ordinary lyric poem, an unremarkable example of the retirement mode featuring generic diction and uncontroversial subject matter, and lacking a famous author, political edge, satirical bite or much in the way of sexual tension. Yet despite its apparent ordinariness, this poem had a remarkable existence in the eighteenth century: it was reproduced at least fifty times in newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, miscellanies and songbooks, and in broadside and slip-song format. It was copied into manuscript miscellanies, set to music, performed on stage, and alluded to in satirical prints. It attracted the attention of scholars and poets, it was abridged and bowdlerized, and it became tangled up in a Jacobite scandal. It was attributed, at various points, to an anonymous dead student, Stephen Duck, George Granville, Samuel Croxall, and Thomas Chatterton. Tracing the publication and reception of 'The Midsummer Wish', this article explores what this remarkable story might reveal about the landscape of eighteenth-century poetic culture.