BY BONNIE LATIMER One of the funniest texts of the mid-eighteenth century is Jane Collier’s acerbic An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (1753). Collier sardonically imagines that most people’s true goal in life is ‘to plague all their acquaintance’. She helpfully lays down rules for doing so, encompassing masterpieces of passive aggression—for example,… Continue reading Feature: “Rules to (perhaps) live by: Samuel Richardson and 18th century educational writing”
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