Brings together a group of scholars from a diverse range of disciplines, connecting the subject of loneliness to history, literature and art Contributes to a growing interest in the history of emotions and the role of loneliness in past and present Takes an experiential, as well as institutional, approach to loneliness

Towns are imagined, lived and experienced, as much as they are conceived and constructed. They reflect cultural and intellectual currents, prevailing economic climates and unresolved tensions. They are physical entities, shaped by topography, time and technology, as well as social and spatial constructs. They are also always gendered and contested spaces. This volume, the last from the Gender in the European Town (GENETON) project, approaches life in the European town over time and across class and national boundaries. Through contextualized case studies, it provides scholars and students with new research-snapshots-of contemporary physical and built environments that explores how contemporary urban residents experienced and deployed gendered urban spaces over an important period of modernization.

Placing women's experiences in the context of the major social, economic and cultural shifts that accompanied the industrial and commercial transformations of this period, Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus paint a fascinating picture of the change, revolution, and continuity that were encountered by women of this time. A thorough and well-balanced selection of individual chapters by leading field experts and dynamic new scholars, combine original research with a discussion of current secondary literature, and the contributors examine areas as diverse as the Enlightenment, politics, religion, education, sexuality, family, work, poverty, and consumption. The authors most importantly realise that female historical experience is not generic, and that it can be significantly affected by factors such as social status, location, age, race and religion. Providing a captivating overview of women and their lives, this book is an essential purchase for the study of women's history, and, providing delightful little gems of knowledge and insight, it will also appeal to any reader with an interest in this fascinating topic.

Placing women's experiences in the context of the major social, economic and cultural shifts that accompanied the industrial and commercial transformations of this period, Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus paint a fascinating picture of the change, revolution, and continuity that were encountered by women of this time. A thorough and well-balanced selection of individual chapters by leading field experts and dynamic new scholars, combine original research with a discussion of current secondary literature, and the contributors examine areas as diverse as the Enlightenment, politics, religion, education, sexuality, family, work, poverty, and consumption. The authors most importantly realise that female historical experience is not generic, and that it can be significantly affected by factors such as social status, location, age, race and religion. Providing a captivating overview of women and their lives, this book is an essential purchase for the study of women's history, and, providing delightful little gems of knowledge and insight, it will also appeal to any reader with an interest in this fascinating topic.

A new collection of essays which challenges many existing assumptions, particularly the conventional models of separate spheres and economic change. All the essays are specifically written for a student market, making detailed research accessible to a wide readership and the opening chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the subject describing the development of gender history as a whole and the study of eighteenth-century England. This is an exciting collection which is a major revision of the subject.

A new collection of essays which challenges many existing assumptions, particularly the conventional models of separate spheres and economic change. All the essays are specifically written for a student market, making detailed research accessible to a wide readership and the opening chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the subject describing the development of gender history as a whole and the study of eighteenth-century England. This is an exciting collection which is a major revision of the subject.

Towns are imagined, lived and experienced, as much as they are conceived and constructed. They reflect cultural and intellectual currents, prevailing economic climates and unresolved tensions. They are physical entities, shaped by topography, time and technology, as well as social and spatial constructs. They are also always gendered and contested spaces. This volume, the last from the Gender in the European Town (GENETON) project, approaches life in the European town over time and across class and national boundaries. Through contextualized case studies, it provides scholars and students with new research-snapshots-of contemporary physical and built environments that explores how contemporary urban residents experienced and deployed gendered urban spaces over an important period of modernization.

Based on wide-ranging, original research into political, personal, and general correspondences across a period of significant social and political change, this book explores the gendered nature of politics and political life in eighteenth-century England by focusing on the political involvement of female members of the political elite. Elaine Chalus challenges the notion that only exceptional women were involved in politics, that their participation was necessarily limited and indirect, and that their involvement was inevitably declining after the 1784 Westminster Election. While exceptional women did exist and gender did condition women's participation, the personal, social, and particularly the familial nature of eighteenth-century politics provided more women with a wider variety of opportunities for involvement than ever before. Women from politically active families grew up with politics, absorbing its rituals, and their own involvement extended from politicized socializing up to borough control and election management. Their participation was often accepted, expected, or even demanded, depending upon family traditions, personal abilities, and the demands of political expediency. Chalus reveals that, although women's involvement in political life was always potentially more problematic than men's, given contemporary concerns about the links between sex, politics, and corruption, their participation was largely unproblematic as long as their activities could be explained by recourse to a familial model which depicted their participation as subordinate and supportive of men's. It was when they came to be seen as the leading political actors in a cause that they overstepped the mark and became targets of sexualized criticism. Contemporary critics worried that politically active women posed a threat to male polity, but what actually made them threatening was that they proved that women were not politically incompetent and implicitly demonstrated that gender was not a reason for political exclusion. Although the dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable female political behaviours was sharper from the late eighteenth century onward, Chalus suggests that women who were willing to work creatively within the familial model could and did remain politically active into - and through - the nineteenth century.