Mapping Mythologies by Professor Marilyn Butler published posthumously

Cambridge University Press has published Mapping Mythologies: Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History by Marilyn Butler. Professor Butler, who was Rector of Exeter College from 1993 to 2004, wrote the book in the 1980s but it is only now being published, a year after her death.

Mapping Mythologies traces the imagining of alternative versions of the nation in eighteenth-century Britain, both in the works of a series of well-known poets (Akenside, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Chatterton, Macpherson, Blake) and in the differing accounts of the national culture offered by eighteenth-century antiquarians and literary historians. It charts the beginnings in eighteenth-century Britain of what is now called cultural history, exploring how and why it developed, and the issues at stake.

In the book Professor Butler explores a succession of great writers, but also the politics of a wider culture, in which writers, scholars, publishers, editors, booksellers, and readers all play their parts.

You can read more about Mapping Mythologies and purchase a copy here.