The Concept of the "Well-Educated" Person in Eighteenth-Century English Literature

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of the “well-educated” person as theorized in the literature of the eighteenth-century , Novels and periodical essays by writers such as Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, Daniel Defoe, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Anthony Ashley Coooer, Third Earl of Shaftsbury, Oliver Goldsmith, John Locke, Fanny Burney and Mary Wollstonecraft are referred to as sources for various eighteenth-century views on the characteristics of the ideal "well-educated” person and his duties to society.