Books by John Barrell

Thomas de Quincey, best known for "Confessions of an Opium Eater", was a journalist and propagandist of Empire, of oriental aggression and of racial paranoia. This account of De Quincey's fears of all things oriental is also an analysis of the psychopathology of mid-Victorian imperialist culture.

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain

This book is the first to explore the work of the nearly forgotten Welsh artist and writer Edward Pugh (1763-1813), a fascinating painter of the landscapes of North Wales and a brilliant observer of Welsh rural life.

John Clare, who lived most of his life in rural Northamptonshire, whose landscape was being transformed by enclosure, is taken as the focus of different attitudes to landscape as something to have a 'taste' for. This 1972 text brings 'taste' into contact with the social and economic bases of life.

What is the function of painting in a commercial society? This text describes how British artists of the late-18th and early-19th centuries attempted to answer this question.

John Barrell's influential 1980 study shows why the poor began to be of such interest to painters, and examines the ways in which they could be represented so as to be an acceptable part of the decor of the salons of the rich. His terse and vigourous account has provided a landmark for literary critics, social and art historians.