Robert Bage, Barham Downs

Pam Perkins (University of Manitoba)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1784

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Barham Downs (2 vols, 1784) was Robert Bage’s second novel, and it was the one that, a generation later, seemed to cause his admirer Sir Walter Scott most embarrassment. While Scott readily admitted that, in the early years of the nineteenth century, Bage’s democratic politics were old-fashioned and potentially distracting, he was able to dismiss them with relatively little fuss, merely pointing out “the sophistry on which ... [Bage’s principles] are founded” and remarking, apropos of Hermsprong, that readers should remember “a good jest is no argument” (The Lives of the Novelists. 1826. London: J.M. Dent, 1928, 290). Yet when he turned to Barham Downs, even the urbane and sophisticated Scott w…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

980 words

Citation: Perkins, Pam. "Barham Downs". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 October 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6447, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Save this article