From Ben Jonson's "To Penshurst" to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the author explores the genre of the country house poem (to which he has added Crusoe) and its implications for how the English viewed the urbanization and industrialization of their country. The genre, he argues, shows an attempt to define and construct a commonwealth in the face of the loss of the commons. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
