![](https://english.yale.edu/sites/default/files/styles/publication_landing/public/kramnick_jonathan_-1999-_making_the_english_canon.jpg?itok=JlwxT2YZ)
June 2008
978-0521065924
Jonathan Brody Kramnick’s book examines the formation of the English canon over the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century. Kramnick details how the idea of literary tradition emerged out of a prolonged engagement with the institutions of cultural modernity, from the public sphere and national identity to capitalism and the print market. Looking at a wide variety of eighteenth-century critical writing, he analyzes the tensions that inhabited the categories of national literature and public culture at the moment of their emergence.