This 17th volume from the series of bibliographies of the 18th century is divided into sections on: printing and bibliographic studies; historical, social and economic studies; philosophy, science and religion; the fine arts; literary studies; and individual authors.
In an attempt to better account for the impressive diversity of positions and relations that characterizes the eighteenth-century world, this collection proposes a new methodological frame, one that is less hierarchical in approach and more focused, instead, on the nature of these interactions, on their Addisonian “usefulness,” declared goals, and (un)intended results. By shifting focus from a cultural-historicist approach to sociability to the rhizomatic nature of eighteenth-century associations, this collection approaches them through new methodological lenses that include social network analysis, assemblage and graph theory, social media and digital humanities scholarship. Imagining the eighteenth-century world as a networked community rather than a competing one reflects a recent interest in novel forms of social interaction facilitated by new social media—from Internet forums to various types of social networking sites—and also signals the increasing involvement of academic communities in digital humanities projects that use new technologies to map out patterns of intellectual exchange. As such, the articles included in this collection demonstrate the benefits of applying interdisciplinary approaches to eighteenth-century sociability, and their role in shedding new light on the way public opinion was formed and ideas disseminated during pre-modern times. The issues addressed by our contributors are of paramount importance for understanding the eighteenth-century culture of sociability. They address, among other things, clubbing practices and social networking strategies (political, cultural, gender-based) in the eighteenth-century world, the role of clubs and other associations in “improving” knowledge and behaviors, conflicting views on publicity, literary and political alliances and their importance for an emerging celebrity culture, the role of cross-national networks in launching pan-European and transatlantic trends, Romantic modes of sociability, as well as the contribution of voluntary associations (clubs, literary salons, communities of readers, etc.) to the formation of the public sphere. This collection demonstrates how relevant social networking strategies were to the context of the eighteenth-century world, and how similar they are to the congeries of new practices shaping the digital public sphere of today.
"Even as press-gangs roamed the London streets, eighteenth-century writers applauded, critiqued, and condemned the practice Pepys called "a great tyranny" - the means of naval recruitment by which Britain simultaneously manned her fleets and oppressed her citizens." "This book centers on literature produced in "moments of crisis" - times when Britain faced a military challenge and thus needed her Navy most. When the French gained the upper hand early in the Seven Years' War, David Garrick was moved to write "To honour we call you, not press you like slaves, / For who are so free as we sons of the waves?" This characterization of the press as benign was common in the theater, even as sailors brawled with press-gangs on London Bridge. At the same time, novelists bitterly attacked impressment policy, showing how the press weighs most heavily on the poor."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Informative, richly detailed, and entertaining, this book portrays daily life in England in 1700–1800, embracing all levels of society—from the aristocracy to the very poor—to describe a nation grappling with modernity. When did Western life begin to strongly resemble our modern world? Despite the tremendous evolution of society and technology in the last 50 years, surprisingly, many aspects of life in the 21st century in the United States directly date back to the 18th century across the Atlantic. Daily Life in Eighteenth-Century England covers specific topics that affect nearly everyone living in England in the 18th century: the government (including law and order); race, class, and gender; work and wages; religion; the family; housing; clothing; and food. It also describes aspects of life that were of greater relevance to some than others, such as entertainment, the city of London, the provinces and beyond, travel and tourism, education, health and hygiene, and science and technology. The book conveys what life was like for the common people in England in the years 1700–1800 through chapters that describe the state of society at the beginning of the century, delineate both change and continuity by the century's end, and identify which segments of society were impacted most by what changes—for example, improvements to roads, a key change in marriage laws, the steam engine, and the booming textile industry. Students and general readers alike will find the content interesting and the additional features—such as appendices, a chronology of major events, and tables of information on comparative incomes and costs of representative items—helpful in research or learning.
This book investigates the figure of the military man in the long eighteenth century in order to explore how ideas about militarism served as vehicles for conceptualizations of masculinity. Bringing together representations of military men and accounts of court martial proceedings, this book examines eighteenth-century arguments about masculinity and those that appealed to the 'naturally' sexed body and construed masculinity as social construction and performance. Julia Banister's discussion draws on a range of printed materials, including canonical literary and philosophical texts by David Hume, Adam Smith, Horace Walpole and Jane Austen, and texts relating to the naval trials of, amongst others, Admiral John Byng. By mapping eighteenth-century ideas about militarism, including professionalism and heroism, alongside broader cultural concerns with politeness, sensibility, the Gothic past and celebrity, Julia Banister reveals how ideas about masculinity and militarism were shaped by and within eighteenth-century culture.
For Ireland the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were an era marked by war, economic transformation, and the making and remaking of identities. By the 1630s the era of wars of conquest seemed firmly in the past. But the British civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century fractured both Protestant and Catholic Ireland along lines defined by different combinations of religious and political allegiance. Later, after 1688, Ireland became the battlefield for what was otherwise Britain's bloodless (and so Glorious) Revolution. The eighteenth century, by contrast, was a period of peace, permitting Ireland to emerge, first as a dynamic actor in the growing Atlantic economy, then as the breadbasket for industrialising Britain. But at the end of the century, against a background of international revolution, new forms of religious and political conflict came together to produce another period of multi-sided conflict. The Act of Union, hastily introduced in the aftermath of civil war, ensured that Ireland entered the nineteenth century still divided, but no longer a kingdom.
In March 1757 – early in the Seven Years’ War – a British privateer intercepted an Irish ship, the Two Sisters of Dublin, as it returned home from Bordeaux with a cargo of wine and French luxury goods. Amongst the cargo seized were 125 letters from members of the Irish expatriate community, which were to lay undisturbed in the British archives for the next 250 years. Re-discovered in 2011 by Dr. Truxes, this cache of (mostly unopened) letters provides a colorful, intimate, and revealing glimpse into the lives of ordinary people caught up in momentous events. Taking this correspondence (published by the British Academy in 2013) as a shared starting point, the ten essays in this volume are not so much "about" the Bordeaux–Dublin letters themselves, but rather reflect upon themes, perspectives, and questions embedded within the mail of ordinary men, women, and children cut off from home by war. The volume’s introduction situates these essays within a broad Atlantic context, allowing the succeeding chapters to explore a range of topics at the cutting edge of early-modern British and Irish historical scholarship, including women in the early-modern world, the consequences of war across all classes in society, the eighteenth-century penal laws and their impact, and Irish expatriate communities on the European continent. Leavening these broad themes with the personal snapshots of life provided by the Bordeaux-Dublin letters, this edited collection enlarges, complicates, and challenges our understanding of the mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic world.