Queen Anne and the Arts

Cedric D. Reverand II (Ed.)

2015
334 pages
ISBN 9781611486315
Transits

The cultural highlights of the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714) have long been overlooked. However, recent scholarship, including the present volume, is demonstrating that Anne has been seriously underestimated, both as a person, and as a monarch, and that there was much cultural activity of note in what might be called an interim period, coming after the deaths of Dryden and Purcell but before the blossoming of Pope and Handel, after the glories of Baroque architecture but before the triumph of Burlingtonian neoclassicism. The authors of Queen Anne and the Arts make a case for Anne's reign as a time of experimentation and considerable accomplishment in new genres, some of which developed, some of which faded away. The volume includes essays on the music, drama, poetry, quasi-operas, political pamphlets, and architecture, as well as on newer genres, such as coin and medal collecting, hymns, and poetical miscellanies, all produced during Anne's reign.

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Reviews

"Reverand argues that, with regard to the arts, 'Anne has been seriously underestimated' and that the 'interim period' in which she ruled, the period before the advent of the Baroque, was characterized by a great deal of artistic experimentation.... The essays make intriguing forays into the ways in which the queen's persona was adopted for political or ceremonial purposes.... Recommended."
- CHOICE

"The essayists are well qualified to assess the arts in the reign of Queen Anne and include EC-ASECS members as well as international scholars .... These, the artists and the Queen, were equal, if perhaps silent or unknowing partners in the same enterprise- to celebrate the glories of Britannia through multiple infusions of shared values and belief systems. In other words, this collection of essays helps us see the constructs that Anne and her artistic community shared in the representation of the finest of British creativity to the world at large." - Professor Beverly Schneller, Belmont University, The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer (30;2)

"There is unusual variety and energy in the essays. Sharing James Winn's distaste, bordering on contempt, for King William, Cedric Reverand starts the book off with this observation: "The main original contributions to English culture under Dutch William were a craze for tulips; a fashion for collecting blue-and-white china, including, especially, china tulip holders ('tulipiere:'); and a passion for a popular Dutch beverage, gin" (2). Some of the liveliness of the collection comes from the unrivalled expertise of some of the contributors. Barbara Benedict, for instance, knows more about collectors and collecting than any other scholar, and her learned "The Moral in the Material: Numismatics and Identity in Evelyn, Addison, and Pope" takes us on a tour of this culturally telling "national passion" that does not seem to include tulipiere."
- Paula Backscheider, Digital Defoe, Issue 8.1, Fall 2016

About the editor:

Cedric D. Reverand II is George Duke Humphrey Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

Distributed by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Paperback: 9781611486339; eBook: 9781611486322