The writing of the eighteenth century were of course, greatly influenced by the tremendous political activity of the time. Fiction was still distrusted,but the literature of debate and persuasion was outstanding, as the great thinkers of the time expressed their views about separation from England and what the nature of the new nation should be.
Religious matters were still important in this age. There was a lot of debate and thought going on about traditional religious ideas and about the newly introduced Deistic ones. The deist centered his religion around man and reason rather than around God and faith. But the literature of this century was not nearly so involved with religion as the Seventeenth Century writing had been.