'Poetry and the Idea of Progress, 17601790' explores the role of poetry in eighteenth-century thinking on human progress. Its central contention is that the textural, verbal characteristics of poetry were a crucial form of response to ideas of human development. That is, the aesthetics of verse how poetry appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect constitute inadequately appreciated forms of response to the ideas of progress which were developing and gaining popular traction in Britain in the period 17601790.