This essential guide defines literature of the eighteenth century as a literature written and received as public conversation. Moyra Haslett discusses and challenges conventional ways of reading the period, particularly in relation to notions of the public sphere. In her wide-ranging study, Haslett reads key texts - including The Dunciad, Gulliver's Travels and Pamela - in their literary and cultural contexts, and examines such genres as the periodical, the familiar letter, the verse epistle and the novel as textual equivalents of coterie culture.