These two volumes examine the way in which translation was instrumental in constructing a literary identity in Britain and Germany in the eighteenth century. The first volume covers in three parts how different methods of translation can be applied to enrich the existent literature in the native language and to an extent create it as an aesthetic possibility, in particular through the translation of form. The first part is theoretical without being a theory, the second part covers the national literary rivalry in Britain in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the third part a German synthesis of material and methods applied earlier on in Britain. The second volume is dedicated to aesthetic, philosophical and national concerns of several major thinkers of the eighteenth century such as Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder.
