Print Culture, High-Cultural Consumption, and Thomson's The Seasons , 1780–1797

Abstract

Embedding James Thomson's popular long poem The Seasons (1730) in the print cultural contexts of the 1780s and 1790s, the essay examines the text's extensive afterlife and studies different printed responses to the production. Specifically, it investigates, among a range of material culture spin-offs and visual adaptations, a selection of fine-printed editions (and their paratextual interpretation of Thomson's classic) targeted at middle-to upper-class consumers, the high-cultural furniture print of scenes fromg The Seasons by Angellica Kauffman, and the appropriation of Thomson's work by Thomas Stothard, one of the most popular book illustrators at the end of the eighteenth century, for two numbers of the ephemeral diary-cum-almanac, The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas .