Common and Courtly Language : The Stylistics of Social Class in Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: Lower-Class English, 1660—1800 Texts Contexts Prescriptive Grammars Chapter 2: Courtly-Genteel Prose The Language of Diplomacy and Petition Love and Courtship Letters of High Friendship Courtesy Books; Model Letters Chivalric Romance Prayer The Ancestry of Courtly-Genteel Prose Summary Chapter 3: Applications Hawkesworth's Revisions (1773) of Captain Cook (1770) Evelina Tom Jones and Clarissa Humphry Clinker Bows and Curtsies: Courtly Letters Bibliography Index