Impressively comprehensive and provocative... This strong and wide-ranging book... earns its authority from the wealth of information it provides... Its determination to expand the range of satirical writing, somewhat in the spirit of Eliot's admonition, is a long-needed redefinition of the scope of the subject... It also offers a considerable enlargement of our knowledge and understanding of a lively and turbulent terrain, whose boundaries are wider and more untidy than we have imagined. Times Literary Supplement Marshall... revolutionizes the study of 18th-century satire. She not only significantly revises accepted definitions of satire but also analyzes and describes vastly greater numbers of satiric works than have previous studies... This original, detailed account of satire during the period will challenge and shape the literary history of satire for decades to come. Essential. Choice So much material is included in The Practice of Satire in England, and its historiographic claims are so striking, that scholars will be discussing this book for some time. Perhaps most admirably, Marshall has put satire, recently a rather neglected genre, firmly back at the center of scholarly attention and debate.
Nicholas Hudson Philological Quarterly The Practice of Satire in England, 1658-1770 is a tremendously ambitious book... at once, monumental and humble-conscious of its own audacity, unfailingly respectful of the scholars whose work is being called into question, yet also confident of its contribution to the advancement of humanistic learning.
Matthew J. Kinservik Modern Philology Broadening the notion of satire to include more works, more kinds of works, and a wider range of satirical motives and effects, [Marshall] offers an account of eighteenth-century literature more amenable to contemporary sensibilities than those of previous proponents and detractors of satire. Eighteenth-Century Life