In 1746, Eliza Haywood—one of the first women to live by her pen—authored and published a satirical periodical called The Parrot. The paper invited its readers to imagine that it had been written and edited by an angry green parrot who, having been taken from his home and forced to live in a cage in London, didn't have very many nice things to say about London society. The result is a breath-taking proto-feminist, anti-racist tour de force which takes no prisoners and packs a stunningly prescient punch. It is also a text which has never been published in a modern edition... until now.

Working with Dr Adam James Smith, Associate Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at York St John University and Co-Director of the York Research Unit for the Study of Satire (YRUSOS), four undergraduate English Literature students and an MA in Publishing student have produced the first ever critical edition of Haywood's Parrot, which will be made freely available online as an Ebook.

To launch the book, we invite you to join us as we uncover this extraordinary text and raise a glass to the radical rebellious Eliza Haywood and her astonishing Parrot. Book tickets here

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