Between 1600 and 1800 newspapers and periodicals moved to the centre of British culture and society. This volume offers a series of perspectives on the developing relations between news, its material forms, gender, advertising, drama, medicine, national identity, the book trade and public opinion.
The papers brought together in this volume bear witness to the growing vigour and diversity of eighteenth-century studies. The seminar at which they were presented was held to honour the memory of a literary scholar, David Nichol Smith. It is therefore understandable and fitting that the majority of the contributions should be concerned primarily with literature. History, art, and philosophy, however, are also dealt with; and the collection as a whole offers a widely ranging and illuminating survey of the period.
This first study of the post-Revolutionary French émigré press in London discusses the exiles' ideologies and activities and their effect on British and French foreign policy.
The interdisciplinary essays in American Revolutions in the Digital Age explore what digital tools can tell us about the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century United States and reveal how an understanding of the American past can make sense of our digital present. By employing a host of innovative digital research methods, these authors challenge long-held assumptions about the American past. In addition, this collection uniquely demonstrates how contemporary anxieties about an array of topics, including media disinformation, patriarchy, economic inequality, and public memory, can be better understood through careful considerations of early American history. Open Access edition funded by Iona University
This book provides compelling new readings of William Blake’s poetry and art, including the first sustained account of his visionary paintings of Pitt and Nelson. It focuses on the recurrent motif of apotheosis, both as a figure of political authority to be demystified but also as an image of utopian possibility. It reevaluates Blake’s relationship to Enlightenment thought, myth, religion, and politics, from The French Revolution to Jerusalem and The Laocoön. The book combines careful attention to cultural and historical contexts with close readings of the texts and designs, providing an innovative account of Blake’s creative transformations of Enlightenment, classical, and Christian thought.
This book examines how the law was made, defined, administered, and used in eighteenth-century England. A team of leading international historians explore the ways in which legal concerns and procedures came to permeate society and reflect on eighteenth-century concepts of corruption, oppression, and institutional efficiency. These themes are pursued throughout in a broad range of contributions which include studies of magistrates and courts; the forcible enlistment of soldiers and sailors; the eighteenth-century 'bloody code'; the making of law basic to nineteenth-century social reform; the populace's extension of law's arena to newspapers; theologians' use of assumptions basic to English law; Lord Chief Justice Mansfield's concept of the liberty intrinsic to England; and Blackstone's concept of the framework of English law. The result is an invaluable account of the legal bases of eighteenth-century society which is essential reading for historians at all levels.
Political scandals have become a pervasive feature of many societies today. From Profumo to the cash-for-questions scandal, from Watergate to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, scandals have come to play a central role in politics and in the shaping of public debate. What are the characteristics of political scandals and why have they come to assume such prominence today? What are the social and political consequences of the preoccupation with political scandal in the public domain? In this major new book Thompson develops a systematic and wide-ranging analysis of the phenomenon of political scandal. He shows that the rise of political scandal is linked to the changes brought about by the development of communication media, which have transformed the nature of visibility and altered the relations between public and private life. He analyses the characteristics of scandals as mediated events and he explains why mediated scandals in the political field have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Distinguishing between three basic types of political scandal, Thompson reconstructs the development of sex scandals, financial scandals and what he calls 'power scandals' in Britain and the United States, showing how scandals unfold and how they form part of distinctive political cultures of scandal. In the final chapter, Thompson develops an original theoretical account of political scandal and its consequences which highlights the connections between scandal, reputation and trust. This book is a path-breaking analysis of a troubling phenomenon which has become a central feature of public life in our societies today. It will be of great interest to students of sociology, politics, and media and cultural studies. It will also appeal to a wider readership interested in social and political issues.
This book tells the story of the bitter feud between the Duchess of Kingston and the actor, Samuel Foote, which resulted in a pair of scandalous trials in London in the revolutionary year of 1776. Set against the backdrop of the American Revolution, the duchess's state trial for bigamy and Foote's criminal trial for attempted sodomy engrossed the attention of Londoners, including George III, Parliament, and the nobility. Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity offers specialists and general readers a meticulously researched and dramatic narrative that relates the fortunes and misfortunes of its protagonists and exposes the social and legal hypocrisies about love, sex, and marriage in the age of George III.