Part 1 1700-1720: the background - social, the ethos; Defoe to 1710; Swift to 1709; essayists and controversialists - Steele, Swift, Defoe, Arbuthnot, Addison; poetry - some forms, some poets; Pope to 1725. Part 2 1700-1740: the drama; the philosophers; critics and aestheticians; letters, memoirs, travel, historians and antiquaries. Part 3 1720-1740: Defoe 1715-1731 - the miscellaneous writer, Defoe and the novel; Swift 1715-1745 - the Irish patriot, Gulliver's Travels, the final phase; poetry 1720-1740 - Thomson, scientific verse, various trends; Pope 1725-1744.