ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter may be difficult to read aloud because it requires emphasizing both “literature” and “politics.” In the texts selected here the literary and the political are equally active considerations. “Literature,” in eighteenth-century Anglo-America, was broadening its meaning along with its public. “Politics” was undergoing a transformation largely in response to the expanding literary public. The “literature of politics” thus consists of writings that address political issues, in an era when political issues were themselves shaped by emerging modes of writing and publishing.
