Search

The article discusses how an anecdote about an evening spent in the early 1760s between woman historian Catharine Macaulay and author Samuel Johnson became influential in determining the reputation, legacy, and character of Macaulay after the event, even after her death. Accounts of the interaction between the two notable people was recorded in the 1791 biography "Life of Johnson" by James Boswell, as well as in the 1790 "Letters on Education" by Macaulay.

This monograph takes on the important task of securing a wider audience for one of the most extraordinary documents of the Enlightenment. An Account of the Fair Intellectual Club (1720) describes a small, secret club of teenage women who came together in Edinburgh for the purpose of mutual self-improvement.−When word of their secret was about to leak, they took the proactive step of publishing this account of their venture. Their document is a milestone in the history of our modern notions of “intellectual” work and of the types of associations–such as clubs–that enabled it. Formed in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the Club helps us to rethink the early chapters of our histories of gender and feminism– and of their central role in the proliferation of the knowledge we call Enlightenment. Tarbuck has make a significant contribution to these reassessments by providing the first extended treatment of the Account. She takes on, in particular, three crucial tasks: the authenticity of the document, including a literature review, its philosophical contexts, including issues of gender, sociability and education, and key conceptual touchstones, including leisure, religion, and reason. Tarbuck is successful in illuminating all of these important areas of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural religion in the eighteenth century was seemingly unhistorical or even antihistorical: it "dehistoricized" morality. It posited a morality that was uniform in all ages, not dependent on any particular revelation, watermarked onto the fabric of our nature, and accessible merely by the light of reason. Even so, natural religion played an important role in the secular historiographical turn in eighteenth‐century England. There was in fact an organic relationship between the two, one that historians have failed to articulate. Precisely because natural religion was thought to rest on timeless and universally valid rational foundations, it became possible to treat traditional religion (meaning above all, but not only, Christianity) as a subject of secular historical study, in the sense that it was subject to the same laws of historical knowledge and historical development as all other subjects of historical study, and left no room for miracles. A central figure in this conceptual relationship was Conyers Middleton, a once‐famous, now‐obscure Cambridge librarian. Middleton's account of natural religion has been swamped by the attention lavished on Matthew Tindal, and his turn to secular historiography lies in the shadows cast by Edward Gibbon. Yet Middleton played a crucial and distinctive role in laying historiographical foundations without which Gibbon could not have written as he did. His understanding of natural religion differed from that of other participants in the "deist controversy" in ultimately far‐reaching ways. Those differences explain why he could treat Cicero as a kind of saint in the church of natural religion, reversing, as it were, the elevation of the Bible above Cicero that Augustine had put into effect at the beginning of medieval history. They explain above all why Middleton could approach the history of Christianity in a manner that anticipated both Voltaire and Gibbon and made their historical writings possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on Bernard Williams' thesis about the intertwining of history and political philosophy, the essay explores how the problem of the history of dēmokratia after the late-eighteenth and over the nineteenth-century in Britain constituted a primary and critical field in which the philosophical meaning of democracy was debated. Configuring a new temporal perspective grounded in the relationship between ancient and modern democracy, historiographical works by John Gillies, William Mitford, and George Grote put forth an understanding of the concept as a battlefield, involving several conflicting meanings, narratives and historical forces. This historiographical tradition highlighted the tensions underpinning the definition of democracy in the long-term temporal frame linking antiquity and modernity. So even more than contemporary philosophical and political writings, historical understanding constituted a unique concept of democracy that both concentrated and dispersed meaning; it was not just one vision of democracy, among others, but one that acquired the paradoxical power to forge some semantic stability and coherence over time, and to accentuate the threat of the concept's break up into distinct political premises and historical moments that constituted it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses law, justice, and public speech in late eighteenth-century Great Britain, particularly the work of political radicals to enact legal reforms through their literature and political philosophy. The novel "Hugh Trevor" by Thomas Holcroft, is a book about a man who becomes disillusioned with the law and it is noted that Holcroft was himself, along with John Thelwall, tried for constructive treason. Many radical authors of the time attended such trials as these and became familiar with legal discourse and formed debate societies such as the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI). The British Treasonable and Seditious Practices Act and the Seditious Meetings Act of 1795 were passed in order to end societies such as the SCI. Other topics include the writings of reformer William Godwin and Thelwall's writings, which emphasized political empowerment.

The article explores the interrelationship between playwright, mimic, and actor Samuel Foote and the younger mimic Tate Wilkinson who made his career mimicking Foote's plays and style of acting. Topics considered include celebrity culture, intellectual property, and imitation in eighteenth-century theater.

In this article I argue that in order to understand how empires expand, we must pay close attention to cross-cultural credit relationships on imperial margins. A fine-grained comparative analysis of two simultaneous financial crises in Madras and Canton during the late eighteenth century shows how voluntary and (initially) mutually beneficial financial transactions and fiduciary relationships could morph into something imperial, and how cross-cultural credit could be transformed into colonial debt. More specifically, my analysis demonstrates how a global network of British brokers and investors connecting Madras, Canton, and London used legal, diplomatic, and military means, exploiting imperial resources while concurrently lobbying British statesmen in London to enforce their contracts abroad. This article thus reveals the interplay between events, actors, and interests abroad and at home, and makes visible the process by which imperial engagement became amplified and relationships of power could change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the claims of Eric Williams and the more recent Legacies of British Slave Ownership projects regarding the influence of enslavement in the building of Britain and its empire through a multi-generational study of a leading British elite family, the Bentincks. Using the concept of imperial careering, it charts how four men from this family not typically identified as enslavers or abolitionists were entangled with enslavement in Britain's Western and Eastern empires. It concludes that the influence of enslavement was extensive and mainly exploitative, but involved losses as well as gains for these elite protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early British imperial voyages to Australia did not occur entirely at sea or solely within the sphere of British influence. In the late eighteenth century Britain controlled few ports. Imperial expansion under sail therefore required supplies, rest and repair at the ports of other empires. Indeed, in 1787 the First Fleet laid over in the Atlantic harbours of Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands, Rio de Janeiro in Portuguese Brazil and the Dutch East India Company's Cape colony in southern Africa. These layovers varied in length from a week to a month. During this time British officials went ashore on imperial business. What is less understood is that other voyagers also visited port townships and hinterlands to explore, socialise and make personal purchases, presenting opportunities to view settler colonialism under other empires. In her study of European travel writing, Mary Louise Pratt termed 'imperial eyes' the ways of seeing that produced othering discourses of non-Europeans. Through a new reading of 1787 travel accounts, and others from 1789 and 1791, this article argues that British imperial voyaging to Australia entailed seeing with trans-'imperial eyes' in the colonies of other empires. These encounters led to the formation of impressions about indigenous peoples under other colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary analysis of the novel "Captain Singleton" by Daniel Defoe is presented. Focusing on scenes that describe Mozambican artifacts, the story of a rebellion aboard a slave ship, and a meeting with a naked Englishman in Africa, it argues that Defoe depicts savagery as a product of history rather than a result of inherent incapacity. The author goes on to suggest that the novel indicates the technologies that made Great Britain a global power could be lost or forgotten.

This article constitutes a re-examination of the financial failure of the first income tax in Britain, introduced in 1799 in order to address the rising cost of the French revolutionary wars. In accounting for this failure, the existing literature has focused largely on failings in the administration of the tax, often blaming, for example, its emphasis on local responsibility for tax collection, and its reliance on the honesty of its contributors. This article furthers these interpretations by highlighting that such issues were particularly problematic in their application to the commercial sector of society. It argues that the preferential treatment of commercial interests in the substance of the tax, on account of their privileged position in the political sphere, led to the establishment of a culture of commercial evasion. The evidence for this is examined at length, through both detailed analysis of the yield of the tax, as well as the attitudes of contemporaries evident in the literature at the time. This analysis ultimately leads to the conclusion that commercial evasion of the first tax played a pivotal, and hitherto underplayed, role in the financial underperformance of the tax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several examples of the contributions of developments in early 18th-century Great Britain on the success of the monarchy. These examples include the propagation of legal restraining power, the value of trade, and a significant change in political theology. Also tackled are the decline of the High Church and discontent in several areas of British life.

Abstract: This introduction surveys the methodological approaches, critical categories and vocabularies that have shaped scholarly responses to eighteenth‐century English religious writing. Recognising the significance of recent developments in book history for our understanding of the textual reception of religious texts, we argue for renewed attention to literary production in terms of the agency, identity and experience of both authors and readers. Literary‐critical analysis offers a productive means to this end, revealing the nuances of religious texts and providing powerful new lines of enquiry at the intersection of literary, theological and historical studies of eighteenth‐century religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on The Devil in an Air Balloon (1784) and Thomas Hood's "Ode to Mr. Graham" (1825), this essay argues that ballooning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was not just an object of satire but also a technique for it, a means to assess the world from a hitherto never-experienced perspective. The view from above could take a fuller measure of societal corruption and reframe it within a wider context. Ultimately, this paper corrects the assumption that the view from above was necessarily an epistemology of domination, revealing a broader variety of aesthetic and ideological purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Anglo-Saxon courts, from the eighth century down to the Norman conquest, 'officers of the mouth', bore household titles and served the king and his guests during meals, at least on major occasions. Those butlers ( pincernae) and dish-bearers ( dapiferi, disciferi) were not mere 'waiters' but members of great aristocratic families; serving the king's table was an honour for them, with all the implications of that word in an early medieval context. Using a variety of sources, particularly the subscription lists of charters, this article examines their rank at court, social origin, degree of proximity to kings and queens, and the nature of their occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the American scenes of Charlotte Smith’s novel,The Old Manor House, provide a crucial representation of Smith’s concerns in the novel with economic and social dependency in eighteenth-century Britain. For Smith, the experiences in America of the novel’s protagonist, Orlando Somerive, pose complex iterations of “feminine” dependency that can be understood as a generalized and, at times, de-gendered experience of the economically and politically vulnerable. Vital to this claim is Orlando’s capture by a group of Iroquois warriors, an ordeal that challenges the possibility of stable national and gender identities. Smith’s depiction of Orlando’s American experience and his return to England concludes with the resigned recognition of the intractability of the “romance of property.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, Adam Bridgen argues that the oft-condemned "sycophancy" of James Woodhouse's early poetry is a misapprehension that overlooks the emergence of his evangelical, egalitarian beliefs in the mid-1760s. Reconsidering the letters between Woodhouse and his patrons reveals not only the influential friendships he cultivated as a plebeian poet but also the class prejudices he continued to encounter and resist, often forcefully. Although he conformed to a humble self-portrayal in his 1764 and 1766 Poems, Woodhouse's subversion of praise allowed him to criticize as well as commend elite behavior; viewing benevolence as a Christian duty faithful to the more equal society that God had intended, he praised patronage, in fact, for its leveling potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a large number of historical records were published in a wide variety of forms, most of which can be described as being part of wider historical and antiquarian practices. Taking the publishing of record editions as itself a historical practice, this article surveys the varying people, practices, and purposes involved before discussing a number of continuities and changes in the practice across two centuries. It will show how records publications were not only access driven but also concerned with the preservation of records, and that they influenced archival practices, changing the way that archival collections were ordered and arranged. The article will also argue that the place of record publications in wider historical practice changed from being one among a wide variety of practices used to engage with the past to a much more restricted role as an auxiliary practice making sources available to narrative historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an emerging genre in eighteenth-century England, the novel was characterised by playfulness and experimentation. In many cases illustrators responded in kind, matching verbal with visual inventiveness. Examples of graphic illustration that capture this spirit of innovation feature throughout this special issue of the Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies. This article asks what we can learn, conversely, from instances in which an illustration closely followed an earlier design for the same title, or a particular graphic image continued to illustrate a novel over time, unchanged from one edition to the next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social organization of schools in Great Britain in 1800 by examining the reception history of educationalist Andrew Bell and education innovator Joseph Lancaster's experiments in mass education. Topics include the importance of the British domestic debate between Anglican educators and secular educations, the debates on Indian education and English literary studies, and Bell and Lancaster's opposition to punishing students who violated the school's rules of conduct.

An essay is presented on the allegories of origins in a charged, protracted moment in Great Britain in the 18th century through the example of the book "Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus" by Mary Shelley. Particular focus is given on the fictional and nonfictional texts that feature accounts of the origins of society, language and political institutions during the century.

The article profiles John Theophilus Desaguliers, an experimental philosopher and freemason in 18th-century Great Britain.

The article discusses the history of medical discourse, women's writing and the perplexing form of hysteria in 18th-century Great Britain. Topics include the accounts by lwomen who suffered hysterical symptoms, the medical opinions of literary women who were not official physicians on hysteria like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the rejections by women writers on the physiological focus to medical theories of hysteria.

In 1716 Edward Lord Harley took possession of one the country's most iconic studs when his wife, Henrietta, inherited Welbeck Abbey (Nottinghamshire) on the death of her mother. At the time, the stud, made famous by her great grandfather, William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, was in temporary eclipse and run down. He resolved to restore its fortunes. However, beset by debts and with other expensive interests to distract him, including the purchase of books and manuscripts, he allowed the stud to decay, winding it up just over a decade later. With careful management and sound, timely investment, Harley could have restored its fortunes. However, he hoped to re-establish the stud 'on the cheap', utilizing the top class stallions and mares he had at his disposal to produce first-rate foals, from which he would select the best as replacements. Sadly, too few of the foals came up to expectations. In vain, his agent advised him to retire the ageing mares and invest in suitable replacements. His failure to do so soon impacted on the quality and the number of horses produced. Inevitably, he failed, providing contemporaries and historians alike with an object lesson on how not to run a 'top-end' stud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature on payments for slave sales in the later phase of the British slave trade. It analyses the procedures used in the ‘guarantee’ system in transatlantic slaving whereby merchants in British ports forged close connections with African factors in British America and with British businessmen who guaranteed to pay the factors’ bills presented as payments for slave sales. This was an important institutional procedure in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. Though the ‘guarantee’ system has been explained in outline in previous studies, the case study presented here offers the most detailed appraisal of this system. Examining the British slave trade to Jamaica in 1790s, then the most significant disembarkation centre for enslaved people taken on British vessels, the paper explains the coordination necessary between groups of British merchants, their African factors in Jamaica and their British guarantee in order to secure payments for slave sales at a time of considerable volatility in the demand for slaves in Jamaica. The paper suggests that cooperation between merchants in different British ports in connection with the slave trade is as worthy of investigation as the rivalry between the British ports involved in the ‘Guinea’ traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]