Summary
Ashley Marshall specializes in British literature and culture of the late 17th and 18th centuries. Her first book, The Practice of Satire in England, 1658-1770, offers a new literary history of satire, based on more than 3,000 primary sources across genres. Her second monograph is a depth rather than breadth study, entitled Swift and History: Politics and the English Past. Her most recent book, Political Journalism in London, 1695-1720: Defoe, Swift, Steele and their Contemporaries, explores the beginnings of the culture of daily journalism and its implications for partisan political debate. This study traces the evolution of ideologies of leading papers and offers original readings of well-known papers and first accounts of an extensive network of smaller ventures. This is the first study to illuminate the whole ecosystem of periodical publishing during this important moment and it also offers a groundbreaking analysis of the radically different ways in which writers of different ideological convictions addressed their public, seeking either to limit or to foster popular political engagement.
Research interests
- Late 17th and 18th-century British literature
- Satire
- Political journalism and propaganda
- Historicism(s)
Publications
- Political Journalism in London, 1695-1720: Defoe, Swift, Steele and their Contemporaries (The Boydell Press, 2020).
- Swift and History: Politics and the English Past (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- "Beyond Furbank and Owens: A New Consideration of the Evidence for the ‘Defoe' Canon," Studies in Bibliography 59 (2015): 131-90.
- The Practice of Satire in England, 1658-1770 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Pp. xviii + 430. Paperback edition, summer 2016.
Education
- Ph.D., English, Pennsylvania State University, 2009
- M.A., English, Pennsylvania State University, 2005
- B.A., English, University of Virginia, 2002