This thesis is an examination of the work of William Mason, an eighteenth-century poet who, though highly regarded in his own time, is little known in ours. The thesis seeks to revalidate Mason as a poet worthy of attention in the twenty-first century. The Introduction contextualises Mason, both socially and culturally. Emphasis is given to the importance of Whig politics in his life and works, and to the influence upon him from an early age of the philosophy of John Locke. Attention is also drawn to Mason’s ability as an innovative adaptor of ancient genres, the importance to him of Milton’s verse, and the relevance of his ‘public’ poetry to modern Britain. The first part of Chapter One provides an overview of Mason’s poetic trajectory, from his popularity in the eighteenth century to his decline in the nineteenth. The general loss of interest in eighteenth-century poetry, and its revival in the twentieth, is considered. In the second part of the chapter, Mason’s youthful poetic claim to be the literary and moral descendant of Milton and Pope is examined in the context of his early monody, and its innovative purpose and style. Attention is drawn to the intertextuality that informs much of the poetry discussed in this thesis. The treatment of the Pindaric ode in the hands of earlier poets, and Mason’s far more authentic one, are subsequently discussed. Examples are given which illustrate Mason’s successful treatment of the genre, and of his concern with the preoccupations of the age. In Chapter Two Mason’s georgic, The English Garden, is examined. Consideration is given to Mason’s choice of Miltonic form, to the poet’s employment of his subject, gardening, as a representation of the state of the nation, and to the poet’s personal involvement in the verse in a variety of manifestations. His success in matching subject to form is demonstrated. Mason’s correspondence with Walpole concerning the American war, his collaboration with William Burgh, and his use of prose as well as poetry for political purposes, are discussed. Chapter Three provides a brief account of the attitudes to satire from the late seventeenth century to Pope’s death, and goes on to look at Mason’s own satire. His satires are discussed in the context of his political and literary relationships with Walpole, Gray, Pope and Churchill, and his concern with the issue of slavery is foregrounded. The individual satires are examined, and examples explored of Mason’s novel and varying employment of the genre in the service of his Whig viewpoint. The Conclusion draws together the points made in the body of the text, and claims a place for Mason amongst the eighteenth-century poets rediscovered by recent scholarship.

William Mason (1829–1908) was a well-known American composer, pianist, and pedagogue. Researchers have mainly focused on Mason's career as a pedagogue in the United States and his pedagogical treatises, which are widely considered and used as the conceptual core of teaching materials on the nineteenth century. However, there has been only an annotated catalogue of Mason's music works, and no performance guide to his piano compositions. This dissertation is designed to be the first performance guide to his solo piano repertoire and act as an introduction to his music through an examination of selected works suitable for the intermediate student. This study provides instruction for students on how to practice these works through the analysis of the elements of practice – pedaling, phrasing, technique practice, touch, and musical expression – which were all considered as essential by Mason himself for a good performance. The five piano works selected are: Three Preludes, Op. 8, No. 1; Ballade et Barcarole, Op. 15; Valse Caprice, Op.17; Spring-Dawn, Mazurka–Caprice, Op. 20; and Spring Flower–Impromptu, Op. 21.

In this project, I examine the impact of early literary criticism, early literary history, and the history of knowledge on the perception of the laureateship as it was formulated at specific moments in the eighteenth century. Instead of accepting the assessments of Pope and Johnson, I reconstruct the contemporary impact of laureate writings and the writing that fashioned the view of the laureates we have inherited. I use an array of primary documents (from letters and journal entries to poems and non-fiction prose) to analyze the way the laureateship as a literary identity was constructed in several key moments: the debate over hack literature in the pamphlet wars surrounding Elkanah Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (1673), the defense of Colley Cibber and his subsequent attempt to use his expertise of theater in An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740), the consolidation of hack literature and state-sponsored poetry with the crowning of Colley Cibber as the King of the Dunces in Pope’s The Dunciad in Four Books (1742), the fashioning of Thomas Gray and William Mason as laureate rejecters in Mason’s Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Whitehead (1788), Southey’s progressive work to abolish laureate task writing in his laureate odes 1813-1821, and, finally, in Wordsworth’s refusal to produce any laureate task writing during his tenure, 1843-1850. In each case, I explain how the construction of this office was central to the consolidation of literary history and to forging authorial identity in the same period. This differs from the conventional treatment of the laureates because I expose the history of the versions of literary history that have to date structured how scholars understand the laureate, and by doing so, reveal how the laureateship was used to create, legitimate and disseminate the model of literary history we still use today.