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Any era can be characterized by its oppositions and polarities, but perhaps few were more defined by their contradictions than the eighteenth century in Britain. Reason and passion, honor and ribaldry, skepticism and fantasy, tradition and revolution: in capturing the tensions between these dyads, the wildly energetic literature of the period furnishes a singular lens through which to examine questions of consciousness, gender, celebrity, race, political theater, and even life during a pandemic that continue to shape our lives today. Authors studied may include Frances Burney, Ottobah Cugoano, Daniel Defoe, Olaudah Equiano, John Gay, Samuel Johnson, Charlotte Lennox, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Mary Wollstonecraft.