The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century SatireEighteenth century Britain thought of itself as a polite, sentimental, enlightened place, but often its literature belied this self image. This was an age of satire, and the century's novels, poems, plays, and prints resound with mockery and laughter, with cruelty and wit. The street level invective of Grub Street pamphleteers is full of satire, and the same accents of raillery echo through the high scepticism of the period's philosophers and poets,