Eighteenth-century England Research Articles

The pursuit of ‘true-spelling’ in English: Prescriptivism, standardisation and orthographic variation

ABSTRACT As the vernacular was re-assigned the functions that Latin fulfilled in the Middle Ages, close comparisons between these two languages stressed the urgent need for the standardisation of English. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England saw the rise of codification and prescriptivism, two stages in the standardisation process that succeeded the selection, diffusion and acceptance of certain linguistic forms. A large number of works were published within the umbrella of codification, including grammars, spelling lists, pronouncing dictionaries or linguistic treatises, each targeting different areas of the language. James and Leslie Milroy (2012: 57) claim that ‘just as dictionaries prescribe uniquely correct spellings, so handbooks of usage prescribe uniquely correct grammatical constructions’, thus establishing a parallelism between the two. Most dictionaries published during the Early and Late Modern periods declare themselves prescriptive in their aims to provide the ‘True-spelling’ (Preston 1674: title page) of the English language, as if there was a false or fake alternative, thus vetoing all other orthographic variants. However, there arises an issue in this endeavour: spelling had become widely standardised by the time these dictionaries were available, except for some of the remnants of variation that continue to exist today. This paper addresses the standardisation of colour- and theatre-type words in historical British English for the purpose of assessing the impact that linguistic prescription had, if any, on the speakers’ spelling habits. As a corpus-based study, the analysis relies on a close comparison of usage and precept that draws correspondences between these two dimensions of language.

Ancient and Modern in Eighteenth-Century British Music Criticism: The Contradictory Case of Henry Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate

ABSTRACT During the early modern period, the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns encapsulated profound changes in the way people conceived of the past in relation to their own present. While the Ancients continued to advocate emulating esteemed ancient authorities, the Moderns sought to break away from previous models through original invention. In reality, this binary opposition disguises a much more gradual process of change, which often resulted in contradictory perspectives on the past. This article uses music criticism from eighteenth-century Britain to explore these complexities, concentrating on how Henry Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate was appropriated by authors from both sides of the Quarrel to advance opposing viewpoints, using embryonic musical analysis as a hermeneutic tool. The study exposes the tensions underlying the developing historical narratives on which Purcell’s posthumous reputation was built, allowing us to place our own understanding of his reception more firmly within its socio-cultural context.

Selling Ancestry: family directories and the commodification of genealogy in eighteenth century Britain

Selling Ancestry: family directories and the commodification of genealogy in eighteenth century Britain

Reimagining Illness: Women writers and medicine in eighteenth-century Britain

Reimagining Illness: Women writers and medicine in eighteenth-century Britain

Correction to: Heather Meeks, Reimagining Illness: Women Writers and Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Correction to: Heather Meeks, <i>Reimagining Illness: Women Writers and Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Britain</i>

Attitudes to Pedlars and Street Traders in Late Eighteenth-Century England: ‘Commercial Hatred’ or Anti-Jewish Prejudice?

Abstract The late eighteenth century saw intense debate over the status of pedlars. In 1785, Pitt imposed a tax on shopkeepers and attempted to placate them by suggesting that he would ban the economic competition they faced from pedlars. It was only thanks to the support of manufacturers that pedlars were saved from economic destitution. Following the eventual repeal of the legislation, the spotlight moved to the itinerant tradesmen of London. The work of Patrick Colquhoun, a magistrate, highlighting Jewish street traders in London, led to proposed legislation which would have identified all Ashkenazi Jews in England and created a board with the power to levy a tax on the Jewish community. This article seeks to explain the complexity and inadequacy of the pedlars’ licensing legislation. It considers both economic and class conflicts and the anti-Jewish prejudices behind both debates. The article argues that the national debate over the tax on shopkeepers was a question of economic conflict and that anti-Jewish stereotypes played a limited role. In contrast, it argues that the debate over tradesmen in London was heavily influenced by anti-Jewish sentiments which were particularly powerful in the City of London. The debates highlight both the nature of economic conflict in late eighteenth-century England and the way in which anti-Jewish prejudice led to the proposal of legislation identifying and stigmatising the Jewish community.

Sinners, Victims, or Survivors? Prostitution in the Moral Landscape of Eighteenth-century England

Sinners, Victims, or Survivors? Prostitution in the Moral Landscape of Eighteenth-century England

Emotional economies of pleasure among the gentry of eighteenth-century England

ABSTRACT This article analyses familial cultures and exchanges of pleasure among 11 eighteenth-century gentry families. The research is based on a substantial collection of family correspondence and identifies emotion words within these letters to understand familial conversations about pleasure and the various purposes that pleasure was put to. Here pleasure is problematised and studied as an emotion. There are three main arguments. Firstly, the letters reveal a previously hidden world of family pleasure, connected to but in some ways remote from the public and sensory pleasures of the urban renaissance that most previous studies have focused on. The letters reveal an emotional economy of pleasure, where feelings materialised as currencies underlying the building and breaking of family relationships. Secondly, pleasure was not a singular or solitary feeling, but rather operated in affective clusters with other emotions such as anxiety and surprise. Finally, pleasure and displeasure were vital in keeping good order among the gentry and between the gentry and their subordinates, within inheritance systems and family dynamics where inequality and an unequal distribution of resources were part of everyday life.

Print culture and economic constraints: A quantitative analysis of book prices in eighteenth-century Britain

Who could afford books in the late early-modern period? We explore how prices related to the demand for books in eighteenth-century Britain by analysing extensive bibliographic and socio-economic data based on Bayesian statistics and machine learning. Our results quantify in financial terms the difficulty of buying print products faced by most British households in the eighteenth century, and how this related to the varying levels of supply across price segments. We found no evidence of the well known claim that legislation would have led to lower prices. The inadequate supply and high cost of books make it likely that only higher-income households bought them regularly from the primary market.

Imprisoned Petticoats: Data from the Prison Records of the Jacobite Rising of 1745

Women of the Jacobite Rising of 1745 significantly contributed to the military power of the Jacobite army. Their participation with the legal system reveals important information about women’s place before the law in eighteenth-century Britain. Women of the period were able and willing to engage in Jacobite intrigue with a lessened degree of danger from capital punishment which made them important to the Jacobite movement by allowing them to assist with escape attempts, military recruitment, and espionage without the danger from judicial repercussions that their male counterparts could face. They proved to be a significant force for the Jacobite political movement, and the hopes of the Stuart claimants would not have lasted as long without the significant support received from the female demographic in eighteenth-century Britain.

‘The Wild West of England’: Enclosure, Stag-Hunting, and the Creation of New Popular Perceptions of Exmoor in the Nineteenth Century

ABSTRACT Recent research emphasises parallels between agrarian enclosure campaigns in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain and Ireland, and neo-colonial discourses. Both used the ‘wasteful’ under-exploitation of land by indigenous populations as moral justifications for its appropriation for capitalist agriculture. Focusing on reclamation campaigns on Exmoor, a former royal forest in south-west England, sold by the Crown in 1818, this article shows how these discourses were displaced by emergent defences of undeveloped ‘wildness’, advanced in sustained media campaign by advocates of stag hunting. Although they pitted ‘wildness’ against ‘civilised’ agriculture, the article argues that this was an alternative discourse of modernity. 1

Fictions of Presence: Theatre and Novel in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Ros Ballaster (review)

Fictions of Presence: Theatre and Novel in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Ros Ballaster (review)

De lunatico inquirendo: managing family inheritance across madness in eighteenth-century London.

An 'inquisition' (or inquiry) held before a Justice of the Peace was the primary instrument for management of lunacy in eighteenth-century England. Yet its purpose was to protect wealth rather than the individual. The 1766 case book of Dr John Monro, London's leading doctor for madness, unexpectedly records a consultation that links two siblings who both had inquisitions. Nicholas Jeffreys' only son was attested lunatic in 1744: to circumvent inheritance through primogeniture, Jeffreys directed the family wealth to his last living child. One of his three daughters married Lord Camden, a former Lord Chancellor: after her and her second sister's deaths, the last-surviving sister was also placed under inquisition in 1780, to ensure the inheritance for his own family.

Laughing at Hypocrisy: The Turncoats (1711), Visual Culture and Dissent in Early Eighteenth-Century England

This article considers The Turncoats (1711), an anti-Dissent graphic satire published after the Tory victory in the 1710 General Election. The print ridiculed the hypocrisy of those Dissenters who abandoned their principles and conformed to the Church of England after that election, and pointed to the pervasiveness of religious hypocrisy in early eighteenth-century England more generally. This article contextualizes the print within the tense religious and political rivalries that developed after the 1688 Revolution and the trial of Henry Sacheverell. The Turncoats’ ridicule resonated because it built on older traditions of stereotypes in anti-popery and anti-puritanism, which used mockery to attack those perceived to be hypocrites. Mockery is analyzed by considering how early modern culture understood laughter. It is argued that ridicule in The Turncoats expressed superiority over hypocrites by subjecting them to contempt and provided relief from anxieties about the prevalence of hypocrisy during the rage of parties.

Subtle Social Critique in Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer

Subtle Social Critique in Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer

The First Dog Doctors: Canine Healthcare Practitioners in the Eighteenth-Century Medical Marketplace.

The question of when dogs became the recipients of veterinary care has long been debated; current scholarship does not acknowledge the long tradition of canine healthcare provided by irregular specialists prior to the late nineteenth century. This article reveals, however, that eighteenth-century Britain was home to a thriving canine medical marketplace. Among its key actors were 'dog doctors'-individuals without formal healthcare training who regularly treated and healed dogs. This article offers the first historical account of the eighteenth-century dog doctor, contextualising and reappraising his identity, clients and services. It focusses on the dynamic career of the celebrity practitioner John Norborn, who proudly self-identified as a 'dog doctor' when the term was considered an insult. In doing so the article considers the conditions in which specialist care for dogs first developed and argues for a new chronology of canine veterinary medicine.

SAGAL, Anna K. Botanical entanglements: women, natural science, and the arts in eighteenth-century England

SAGAL, Anna K. <i>Botanical entanglements: women, natural science, and the arts in eighteenth-century England</i>

Intersections of Identity: Race, Legacy, and Belonging, within Caryl Phillips’s Historical Narrative “Dr Johnson’s Watch” as Part of Three English Lives

This essay examines Caryl Phillips’s portrayal of the historical figure Francis Barber. This formerly enslaved person rose to become the companion and heir of Samuel Johnson, the renowned lexicographer and writer. Phillips’s narrative, ‘Dr. Johnson's Watch,’ encapsulates two pivotal episodes from Barber’s life: his poignant attendance at Johnson's funeral in Westminster Abbey and his encounter with an unnamed narrator years later in Lichfield. Through these episodes, Phillips delves into profound themes of race, identity, belonging, and legacy against the backdrop of eighteenth-century England, a society entrenched in slavery and colonialism. The essay offers a nuanced literary analysis of the complex relationship between Johnson and Barber, both of whom existed as outsiders within their own contexts. It prompts reflection on the representation and agency of black individuals in history and literature, grappling with the challenges and opportunities they confronted in a largely hostile and indifferent society. At its thematic core lies Johnson’s watch, symbolising the enduring connections between individuals of diverse backgrounds and underscoring the legacy of figures like Johnson in advocating against the injustices of slavery. Through Phillips's narrative, the essay elucidates the intricate dynamics of race, power, and belonging in English society, shedding light on the struggles faced by immigrants and marginalized individuals during this tumultuous period. Ultimately, ‘Dr. Johnson’s Watch’ serves as a powerful testament to the humanity and dignity of Barber and other foreigners, inviting readers to contemplate the enduring impact of historical figures in advocating for justice and equality.

Prayer for Family and Friends: The Body and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain

AbstractThis article explores how writers, predominantly adhering to a variety of different Christian denominations but also including Jewish writers, discussed religion and the body in letters throughout the long eighteenth century. It draws on a corpus of over 2,500 familiar letters written by men and women of different denominations between 1675 and 1820. That these letters were not chosen because of their religious content makes them a good ‘test’ of the role of faith in everyday understandings of the body. This article underscores the continued centrality of religious discourse and devotional practice in eighteenth-century everyday life. Our research finds that religion was a commonplace register deployed when discussing bodily matters throughout the long eighteenth century. Significantly, this was the case for individuals who otherwise made scant reference to their faith. Discussion of the physical body encouraged recourse to providence, a public discussion of doctrine, and the shared expression of devotion. The ongoing force of religion in people’s lives was thus intimately tied to their embodied experiences. Letters not only expressed but actively maintained this widely shared religious framework for understanding the body.

Alexander Wakelam. Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England. An Economic History of Debtors’ Prisons. [Perspectives in Economic and Social History, Vol. 61.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2021. xi, 253 pp. £97.50. (Paper, E-book: £29.24.)

Alexander Wakelam. Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England. An Economic History of Debtors’ Prisons. [Perspectives in Economic and Social History, Vol. 61.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2021. xi, 253 pp. £97.50. (Paper, E-book: £29.24.)