Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture
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Recent papers in Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture
The character and reputation of Frederick, prince of Wales, have long divided historians. His apparently piecemeal efforts at opposition have been dismissed as lacking in focus, while his mercurial character and early demise have left him... more
This chapter analyses a caricature, produced in 1753 by the watercolourist Paul Sandby entitled Burlesque sur le Burlesque. This caricature attacks the painter William Hogarth, in particular, his recently published aesthetic treatise, The... more
(The Georgian Underworld: Criminal Subcultures in Eighteenth-Century England; Chapter 16) One of the most interesting subjects in the history of sexuality is the sudden appearance, three hundred years ago, of a well organized gay... more
Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives... more
John Wesley's concept of prevenient grace contributes to his 'catholic spirit,' and his openness to God's activity in the lives of people who practice Islam and Judaism, paving the way for interreligious dialogue.
Following the appointment of its first aristocratic Grand Masters in the 1720s and in the wake of its connections to the scientific Enlightenment, ‘Free and Accepted’ Masonry rapidly became part of Britain’s national profile and the... more
This short essay provides contextual background on Robert Burns's lyric, "Ae Fond Kiss," as well as critical analysis of the song.
Distortion is the moment at which the physical means of transmitting a text irrupt into a reader's experience of it. I will discuss distortion here as a phenomenon occurring in printed materials, but I do not wish to exclude other... more
This essay is about the astronomical focus of Joseph Wright's 1766 painting of an orrery
Charlotte Lennox (c.1729-1804) was an eighteenth-century London author whose most celebrated novel, The Female Quixote (1752), is just one of eighteen works published over forty-three years. Her stories of independent women influenced... more
Review by Ros Ballaster, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 37: 544–545.
This study is devoted to the emergence, the characteristics and the function of the London Clubs, which were a key feature of eighteenth-century London life. Their growth, parallel to the advent of the coffee-house, of the press, and to... more
This is the first comparative study of a highly unlikely group of authors: eighteenth-century women peasants in England, Scotland, and Germany, women who, as a rule, received little or no formal education and lived by manual labor, many... more
Fancy in the eighteenth century was part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, whimsicality, erotic desire, spontaneity, deviation from norms and triviality. It was also a contentious term, signifying excess, oddness and... more
This article on the American Revolution was published in AGORA, the magazine of the Victorian History Teachers Association.
My subject is Joseph Priestley in the 1770s, and his place in the later Enlightenment. If any one figure stands for the Enlightenment in England it is Priestley, ‘the Voltaire of Unitarianism’, as Hazlitt styled him. There are many... more
Why did marriage become central to the English novel in the eighteenth century? As clandestine weddings and the unruly culture that surrounded them began to threaten power and property, questions about where and how to marry became urgent... more
Questo articolo apre una serie di scritti con cui l’autore si propone di indagare sul variegato valore della letteratura di Jane Austen e sul suo rapporto con la contemporaneità. I lettori saranno accompagnati in un percorso che metterà... more
Thomas Poole a Somerset magistrate and close friend of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a report on the state of the poor in his parish of Nether Stowey in the year 1832. This report provides an unique glimpse into the lives of the... more
Michael Leoni, a leading singer in late eighteenth-century London, became famous for his role in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's anti-Jewish opera The Duenna. He was discovered, however, at the Jewish synagogue, where his singing enthralled... more
Development of mathematical sciences in the 18th century, especially in the interwoven strands of astronomy, navigation, and surveying, was driven by measurements of ever-increasing exactness. The mathematical instrument makers who... more
The correspondence of John Legas, Samuel Remnant and others, relating to the production and sale of ordnance and shot, 1745-1749.
These extracts on music from the correspondence between Charles Jennens (1700–73) and Edward Holdsworth (1684–1746) reflect the authors' shared interests and (prohibited) political views. Though commonly known as the librettist of... more
This essay examines pseudo-translation in Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and William Beckford’s Vathek as both a literary trope and a reflection of cultural anxieties regarding translatability and nationalism.
This work seeks to examine both the contemporary evidence and historiography of the controversial relationship between King George III and his advisor, mentor, and Favourite, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. It finds that the so-called... more
The polemic surrounding the 1753 Jewish Naturalization Bill was one of the major public opinion campaigns in Britain in the eighteenth century, as well as the most significant event in the history of Britain's Jews between their... more
This historiographical review analyses some of the most important literature concerning British Patriotism and Identity during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and suggests future areas for research.
This article examines how The wealth of nations (1776) was transformed into an amorphous text regarding the imperial question throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Adam Smith had left behind an ambiguous legacy on... more