Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry

"Pithy and wide-ranging. . . . This study provides a fresh new lens through which to reinvestigate the whole of early modern English literature."—Library Journal

In this striking social history, Barbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait we learn was often depicted as an unsavory form of transgression or cultural ambition.

Barbara M. Benedict is the Charles A. Dana Professor of English, and chair of the Department of English, at Trinity College, Connecticut. She is the author of Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies and Framing Feeling: Sentiment and Style in English Prose Fiction, 1745-1800.