This innovative collection explores how a distinctively British model of sociability developed in the period from the Restoration of Charles II to the early nineteenth century through a complex process of appropriation, emulation and resistance to what was happening in France and other parts of Europe. The study of sociability in the long eighteenth century has long been dominated by the example of France. In this innovative collection, we see how a distinctively British model of sociability developed in the period from the Restoration of Charles II to the early nineteenth century through a complex process of appropriation, emulation and resistance to what was happening in France and other parts of Europe. The contributors use a wide range of sources - from city plans to letter-writing manuals, from the writings of Edmund Burke to poems and essays about the social practices of the tea table, and a variety of methodological approaches to explore philosophical, political and social aspects of the emergence of British sociability in this period. They create a rounded picture of sociability as it happened in public, private and domestic settings - in Masonic lodges and radical clubs, in painting academies and private houses - and compare specific examples and settings with equivalents in France, bringing out for instance the distinctively homo-social and predominantly masculine form of British sociability, the role of sociabilitywithin a wider national identity still finding its way after the upheaval of civil war and revolution in the seventeenth century, and the almost unique capacity of the British model of sociability to benefit from its own apparent tensions and contradictions.

This four-volume, reset collection takes as its starting point the earliest substantial descriptions of tea as a commodity in the mid-seventeenth century, and ends in the early nineteenth century with two key events: the discovery of tea plants in Assam in 1823, and the dissolution of the East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade in 1833.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

The eighteenth century saw profound changes in the way prostitution was represented in literary and visual culture. This collection of essays focuses on the variety of ways that the sex trade was represented in popular culture of the time, across different art forms and highlighting contradictory interpretations.

This four-volume, reset collection takes as its starting point the earliest substantial descriptions of tea as a commodity in the mid-seventeenth century, and ends in the early nineteenth century with two key events: the discovery of tea plants in Assam in 1823, and the dissolution of the East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade in 1833.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

This four-volume, reset collection takes as its starting point the earliest substantial descriptions of tea as a commodity in the mid-seventeenth century, and ends in the early nineteenth century with two key events: the discovery of tea plants in Assam in 1823, and the dissolution of the East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade in 1833.

This four-volume, reset collection takes as its starting point the earliest substantial descriptions of tea as a commodity in the mid-seventeenth century, and ends in the early nineteenth century with two key events: the discovery of tea plants in Assam in 1823, and the dissolution of the East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade in 1833.

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

This innovative collection explores how a distinctively British model of sociability developed in the period from the Restoration of Charles II to the early nineteenth century through a complex process of appropriation, emulation and resistance to what was happening in France and other parts of Europe. The study of sociability in the long eighteenth century has long been dominated by the example of France. In this innovative collection, we see how a distinctively British model of sociability developed in the period from the Restoration of Charles II to the early nineteenth century through a complex process of appropriation, emulation and resistance to what was happening in France and other parts of Europe. The contributors use a wide range of sources - from city plans to letter-writing manuals, from the writings of Edmund Burke to poems and essays about the social practices of the tea table, and a variety of methodological approaches to explore philosophical, political and social aspects of the emergence of British sociability in this period. They create a rounded picture of sociability as it happened in public, private and domestic settings - in Masonic lodges and radical clubs, in painting academies and private houses - and compare specific examples and settings with equivalents in France, bringing out for instance the distinctively homo-social and predominantly masculine form of British sociability, the role of sociabilitywithin a wider national identity still finding its way after the upheaval of civil war and revolution in the seventeenth century, and the almost unique capacity of the British model of sociability to benefit from its own apparent tensions and contradictions.

The eighteenth century saw profound changes in the way prostitution was represented in literary and visual culture. This collection of essays focuses on the variety of ways that the sex trade was represented in popular culture of the time, across different art forms and highlighting contradictory interpretations.

The sentimental novel has long been noted for its liberal and humanitarian interests, but also for its predilection for refined feeling, the privilege it accords emotion over reason, and its preference for the private over the public sphere. In The Politics of Sensibility, however, Markman Ellis argues that sentimental fiction also consciously participated in some of the most keenly contested public controversies of the late eighteenth century, including the emergence of anti-slavery opinion, discourse on the morality of commerce, and the movement for the reformation of prostitutes. By investigating the significance of political material in the fictional text, and by exploring the ways in which the novels themselves take part in historical disputes, Ellis shows that the sentimental novel was a political tool of considerable cultural significance.

The sentimental novel has long been noted for its liberal and humanitarian interests, but also for its predilection for refined feeling, the privilege it accords emotion over reason, and its preference for the private over the public sphere. In The Politics of Sensibility, however, Markman Ellis argues that sentimental fiction also consciously participated in some of the most keenly contested public controversies of the late eighteenth century, including the emergence of anti-slavery opinion, discourse on the morality of commerce, and the movement for the reformation of prostitutes. By investigating the significance of political material in the fictional text, and by exploring the ways in which the novels themselves take part in historical disputes, Ellis shows that the sentimental novel was a political tool of considerable cultural significance.

The History of Gothic Fiction debates the rise of the genre from its origins in the late eighteenth-century novel through nineteenth-century fictions of tyrants, monsters, conspirators and vampires to the twentieth-century zombie film. Approaching key novels by authors such as Walpole (The Castle of Otranto), Radcliffe (The Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of Udolpho), Austen (Northanger Abbey), Wollstonecraft (The Wrongs of Woman), Lewis (The Monk), Shelley (Frankenstein), Stoker (Dracula) and Halperin (White Zombie), the argument proceeds on historicist principles, analysing the peculiar tone of these fictions and uncovering themes of credulity and reason, secrecy and enlightenment, tyranny and libertinism, sexuality and gender, race and miscegenation. The final chapters on the vampire and the zombie examine how the un-dead of gothic terror are embedded in an argument from history. Written with an undergraduate audience in mind, this text offers a synthesis of the main topics of Gothic interest and clearly argued summaries of critical debate. It signals its difference from popular psychoanalytic readings of Gothic and argues instead for a more complex, multilayered approach via an historicist reading of Gothic fiction. Illustrated with ten black and white plates and including up-to-date bibliographies, this will be an ideal text for all those with an interest in the Gothic. Key Features: * written with an undergraduate audience in mind * covers topics such as vampires, zombies, tyrants, banditti and demon-lovers * offers clearly argued summaries of critical debate