Imprinting Britain

Imprinting Britain

Author: Michael Eamon

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2015-04-01

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0773583033

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Printing presses were instrumental in creating and upholding a sense of community during the eighteenth century. While the importance of print in the development of colonial America and the nascent United States is well-established, Imprinting Britain extends the historical discussion northward to explore the dynamic and interrelated world of newspapers, coffee houses, and theatre in the British imperial capitals of Halifax and Quebec City. Michael Eamon describes how an English-language colonial community coalesced around the printed word, establishing public spaces for colonists to propose, debate, and define their visions of an ideal society. Whereas American newspapers functioned as incubators of republican and revolutionary thought, their British North American counterparts featured a moderate discourse that rejected republicanism, favoured civic engagement, advocated liberty with propriety, extolled democracy under monarchy, promoted reason over superstition, and encouraged social criticism without revolution. The press also safeguarded against the uncertainties of colonial life by providing a steady stream of transatlantic news, literature, and fashion that helped construct a sense of Britishness in an environment rife with mixed loyalties. Imprinting Britain is the story of communities that turned to the press for a canon of British norms, literary touchstones, and Enlightenment-inspired ideas, which offered a blueprint for colonial growth and a sense of stability in an ever-changing, transatlantic milieu.


The Tontine: A History

The Tontine: A History

Author: Andrew McDiarmid

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-10-04

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 1040251625

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From the last decades of the seventeenth century until the beginning of the twentieth, the tontine, in one form or another, was a ubiquitous financial instrument. As a revenue-raising tool of governments it supported the cost of war, and as a private capital-raising instrument it provided funding for civic improvement and urban development projects. While the tontine is known today mainly through fictional works (Robert Louis Stevenson, Agatha Christie, and The Simpsons among others), this book tells the history of how it evolved from a public revenue-raising scheme into a popular private investment and infrastructure financing tool, before it was displaced by cheaper forms of borrowing. Focusing on the early development of the tontine, and with European and North American case studies, the narrative brings to life the story of a little-understood financial innovation. This concise and engaging book is an ideal introduction to the history of the tontine for all readers interested in financial history.


A Cultural History of Work in the Age of Enlightenment

A Cultural History of Work in the Age of Enlightenment

Author: Anne Montenach

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-09-17

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1350078271

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Winner of the 2020 PROSE Award for Multivolume Reference/Humanities The Enlightenment led to revised ideas about work together with new social attitudes toward work and workers. Coupled with dynamism in the economy, and the rise of the middling orders, work was more frequently perceived positively, as a commodity and as a source of social respectability. This volume explores the cultural implications of the transition from older systems based on privilege, control and embedded practices to a more open society increasingly based on merit and ability. It examines how guild controls broke down and political and commercial systems loosened. It also considers the theoretical justifications that brought new binding ideas, such as the strengthening of ideology on home, domesticity for the female, and work and politics for the male. North America embodied the extremes of these transitions with free workers able to make their way in a society based on ability and initiative while solidifying the ravages of the slavery system. A Cultural History of Work in the Age of Enlightenment presents an overview of the period with essays on economies, representations of work, workplaces, work cultures, technology, mobility, society, politics and leisure.


The Romantic Tavern

The Romantic Tavern

Author: Ian Newman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-03-28

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1108470378

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An examination of taverns in the Romantic period, with a particular focus on architecture and the culture of conviviality.


Exploring the Lives of Women, 1558–1837

Exploring the Lives of Women, 1558–1837

Author: Louise Duckling

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2018-11-30

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1526744988

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Exploring the Lives of Women, 1558-1837' is an engaging and lively collection of original, thought-provoking essays. Its route from Lady Jane Greys nine-day reign to Queen Victorias accession provides ample opportunities to examine complex interactions between gender, rank, and power. Yet the books scope extends far beyond queens: its female cast includes servants, aristocrats, literary women, opera singers, actresses, fallen women, athletes and mine workers.The collection explores themes relating to female power and physical strength; infertility, motherhood, sexuality and exploitation; creativity and celebrity; marriage and female friendship. It draws upon a wide range of primary materials to explore diverse representations of women: illuminating accounts of real womens lives appear alongside fictional portrayals and ideological constructions of femininity. In exploring womens negotiations with patriarchal control, this book demonstrates how the lived experience of women did not always correspond to prescribed social and gendered norms, revealing the rich complexity of their lives.This volume has been published to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Womens Studies Group 1558-1837. The group was formed to promote research into any aspect of womens lives as experienced or depicted within this period. The depth, range and creativity of the essays in this book reflect the myriad interests of its members.