Annotated edition of erudite letters from the eighteenth-century sheds light on intellectual life at the time. One of the more remarkable survivals from sociable eighteenth-century England is the Spalding Gentlemen's Society. Founded in 1710 in Spalding in the south Lincolnshire Fens by the local barrister Maurice Johnson, to encourage thegrowth of "friendship and knowledge", it received hundreds of letters from correspondents across Britain and overseas. Concerned with such matters as antiquities, natural philosophy, numismatics, mathematics, literature and the arts, they were collated by Johnson to provide material for the Society's weekly Thursday meetings. This detailed calendar brings together the 580 letters to survive, from some 154 correspondents. 119 were members of the Spalding Society, including well-known figures of the intellectual world: Martin Folkes, Roger Gale, William Stukeley, many Freemasons and three secretaries of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. The letters are fully annotated and indexed; fifty-four are transcribed in full. They provide a vivid picture of the interests of the "curious" and demonstrate how knowledge spread during the eighteenth century.

Edition of the correspondence of the notable antiquarians William Stukeley and Maurice Johnson, presenting vivid details of life at the time. Both sides of a correspondence, stretching over forty years, between two remarkable Lincolnshire friends, the antiquaries William Stukeley (1687-1765) and Maurice Johnson (1688-1755), are brought together in this volume. Beginningwhen the writers were in their twenties, the letters cover Johnson's work as a lawyer and the development of his cherished Spalding Gentlemen's Society, and Stukeley's career as a physician, his ordination in 1729, and eventual return to London in 1747. The two friends wrote on a wide range of topics, including current affairs, political scandals, financial disasters like the South Sea Bubble and the threat of Jacobite invasions. The letters reflect cultural life: the founding of the British Museum, operatic performances, the activities of the Royal Society and Society of Antiquaries. They portray life in South Lincolnshire: local elections, concerts, race meetings and plays. Local gossip reveals a parade of characters, marrying for love or money, building houses, and encountering alarming accidents. Naturally, the letters also illustrate the lives of the two friends, their financial concerns, their marriages, children and pets, their friendships, difficulties with neighbours and all the minutiae of small-town Lincolnshire life. Above all, the two men shared their passion for the study of antiquity and their enthusiasm for spreadingknowledge as widely as possible, particularly through the learned societies founded during this period. The letters are presented with explanatory notes and a full introduction. Diana Honeybone and Michael Honeybone taught history for the Open University and Nottingham University Department of Adult Education. They have spent many years studying and teaching the local history of the East Midlands, with special emphasis on intellectual activity in the eighteenth century.

Key texts by the antiquarian William Stukeley offer fascinating insights into rural England at the time. William Stukeley's antiquarian interest in his native Lincolnshire has not been widely noted. He is more often associated with his pioneering work on Stonehenge and Avebury, which systematically recorded the sites and their geographical context and began the process of preserving them from destruction. However, he was a keen Lincolnshire man, like his contemporaries Maurice Johnson (the founder of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society) and Sir Isaac Newton. This volume illuminates Stukeley's fascination with South Lincolnshire, especially the town of Stamford. It was characteristic of Stukeley that he became deeply involved with anywhere he lived, first investigating its history and attempting to find remnants of it in the existing buildings around him, then setting up social groups to bring together like-minded local people with the intention of further study. The book brings together three texts from the early part of the career of William Stukeley, largely relating to the years he spent in the town of Stamford: the Iter Oxoniense (1710), Stanfordia Illustrata (1735-6) and the minute book of the Brazen Nose Society (1736-7). These are now brought together for the first time and presented in their complete form, with introduction and notes.