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1700Congreve, The Way of the World
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1700John Dryden, Fables
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1702Queen's Royal Cookery
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1704East India Company sales catalogue
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1711The Spectator
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1712Jonathan Swift, A Proposal...
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1715Sugar in Britain
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1719Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
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1721Bartholomew Fair
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1724Trade and the English language
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1729Swift, A Modest Proposal
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1730East India Company: Bengal textiles
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1731English arrives in the West Indies
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1733Hogarth, Harlot's Progress
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1738Cities in chaos
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1738Polite conversation
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1738James Miller, Of Politeness
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1740Samuel Richardson, Pamela
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1742Advert for a giant
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1743Muffin seller
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1747The Art of Cookery
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1749Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
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1755Johnson's Dictionary
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1759Sterne, Tristram Shandy
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1762Lowth’s grammar
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1762Rousseau, The Social Contract
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1764Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
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1773Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
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1775Captain Cook's journal
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1775Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
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1780Burns, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
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1780Anglo-Indian newspaper
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1781Notices about runaway slaves
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1782First British advert for curry powder
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1789Storming of the Bastille
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1789Olaudah Equiano
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1790William Blake's Notebook
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1791Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
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1791Walker’s correct pronunciation
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1792Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman
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1794Songs of Innocence and Experience
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Intro
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva in 1712, was one of the 18th century's most important political thinkers. His work focused on the relationship between human society and the individual, and contributed to the ideas that would lead eventually to the French Revolution.
His early work argued that the development of civilisation had actually led to a decrease in happiness, and that humans should live instead in a state that was as close to nature as possible. The Social Contract, with its famous opening sentence 'Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains', stated instead that people could only experience true freedom if they lived in a civil society that ensured the rights and wellbeing of its citizens. Being part of such a society involved submitting to the general will - a force that transcended individuals and aimed to uphold the common good.
Rousseau's theories of sovereignty and law had a direct influence on French revolutionaries such as Robespierre, and were blamed for some of the worst excesses of the Terror in France. Nevertheless, The Social Contract has also been seen as one of the defining texts of modern political philosophy, emphasising the need for individuals to play a responsible part in civil society if they want their liberty to be assured.
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