Late Eighteenth-century Britain Research Articles

The Gordon Riots. Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

The Gordon Riots. Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

Mike Jay, The Atmosphere of Heaven: The Unnatural Experiments of Dr Beddoes and His Sons of Genius (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. vii + 296, $30.00/£20.00, ISBN: 978-0-300-12439-2.

Mike Jay, The Atmosphere of Heaven: The Unnatural Experiments of Dr Beddoes and His Sons of Genius (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. vii + 296, $30.00/£20.00, ISBN: 978-0-300-12439-2. - Volume 55 Issue 3

Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance (review)

Reviewed by: Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance Mary Ann Parker (bio) Leslie Ritchie . Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance. Ashgate. 2008. 280. US$114.95 This book provides a fascinating account of social interaction and musical production in late eighteenth-century England. Ritchie begins by laying out her theoretical starting points, the most significant of which is the premise that we can deepen our understanding of the issues by considering musical harmony as related to social harmony. Bolstered by evidence from a wide variety of historical sources, her argument is convincing. The focus is on published songs associated with British women of 'the middle, genteel, and upper classes.' The reader may not be entirely comfortable with Ritchie's blanket characterization of this repertoire as popular song. Nevertheless, the discussions in the three chapters on songs of charity and love, pastoral songs, and songs relating to national identity are enlightening and entertaining. Throughout the book, the narrative is enriched by illustrations, most from eighteenth-century printed editions. The chapter on caritas begins with an examination of hymns and songs written for the benefit of charitable institutions like the Magdalen Hospital for penitent prostitutes. Moving on to songs about tragic female figures such as 'Crazy Jane' (music by 'Miss Abrams') and 'Poor Mary of Buttermore' (words by 'a Lady'), Ritchie demonstrates how women manipulated the 'charitable affect' for their own benefit. Similarly, her rich expose´ of the pastoral song reveals the subversive potential of that seemingly innocent genre. Here, Ritchie reminds the reader that her critical skills extend to musical analysis, such as in her fine discussion of Mary Worgan's 'The Dying Nightingale.' The topic of British identity may be well-trodden ground, but many readers will be unfamiliar with examples like the 'Roast Beef Cantata' or the various 'Hindoo' airs. Highlighting the role of female performers, the author presents 'God Save the King as Sung by Signora Banti, at the King's Theatre,' [End Page 348] a popular print featuring the ornaments sung by the Italian singer Brigida Giorgi Banti in the 1790s. Perhaps the most striking revelation is the extent to which women's participation in music was not confined to the domestic sphere. For example, in the chapter on the pastoral, Ritchie includes discussions of a number of theatrical works with either words or music by women. Furthermore, she challenges what she calls 'the cherished myth that any eighteenth-century woman who wrote music or lyrics only published her work in embarrassed anonymity, or with much self-abasement, or preferably, posthumously.' Using Michael Kassler's transcription of the list of compositions registered at Stationers' Hall, Ritchie shows that significant numbers of women did not hesitate to publish their works, many under their own names. The high quality of the discussions and the consistently interesting content of this book deserved better editing. At times, the writing style is stiff and awkward, particularly in the conclusion. The citation style is inappropriate for a full-length monograph. Even after sifting through all three sections of the bibliography, I never could find the publication details for William Parker's sermon cited in the Introduction (until I resorted to an online library catalogue). When footnotes are used, they frequently appear in the middle of sentences, where they are distracting and visually unappealing. Overall, Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England is a valuable contribution to the field of eighteenth-century studies. It will appeal to specialists in many areas, including musicology, women's studies, literary studies, and the history of publishing. Mary Ann Parker Mary Ann E. Parker, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto Copyright © 2011 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

‘A Species of Slavery’: Richard Price's Rational Dissent and Antislavery

Revd Richard Price was one of the leading intellectual lights of Rational Dissent in late eighteenth-century Britain and was prominent in campaigns for religious and parliamentary reform. Hailed as an ‘Apostle of Liberty’ by the American and French Revolutionaries, Price was also an early subscriber to the Abolition Society in London. While prominent among British Enlightenment figures he had, however, a low profile as an abolitionist and is seldom mentioned in scholarship on abolition. This study discusses the nature of Price's antislavery and his relationship with Americans such as Thomas Jefferson. It sheds more light on the degree to which the emergence of abolitionism depended upon circumstances and how well it combined with other aims and priorities.

Sex, Scandal and Celebrity in Late Eighteenth‐Century England – By Matthew J. Kinservik

Journal for Eighteenth-Century StudiesVolume 34, Issue 1 p. 135-136 Sex, Scandal and Celebrity in Late Eighteenth-Century England – By Matthew J. Kinservik Andrew Rudd, Andrew Rudd Roehampton UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Andrew Rudd, Andrew Rudd Roehampton UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 10 February 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-0208.2011.00204.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume34, Issue1March 2011Pages 135-136 RelatedInformation

“SOMETHING IN MME DE GENLIS STILE”: GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE'S “ZILLIA”, PLAYWRITING AND FEMALE ARISTOCRATIC AUTHORSHIP

Famous as a salonnière, fashion icon and supporter of the Whig Party, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (1757–1806) was also a prolific writer, author of two epistolary novels, numerous poems and at least six manuscript plays. Just as she is in the process of being rediscovered as a novelist and poet, this article explores her even less well-known ambitions as a dramatist and her complex involvement in the theatrical world. The main focus is on the Duchess's earliest surviving play “Zillia” (1782), which is illuminating in connection to her development as a playwright, her interest in closet drama, and the pedagogical and political dimensions of her dramatic works. Particular attention is devoted to the ways in which Devonshire uses the language and discourse of sensibility to sketch an ideal of female aristocratic citizenship. The author also looks at the dynamics between the play and the work it was inspired by, Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis's Théâtre à l'usage des jeunes personnes (Theatre of Education, 1779–80), which illustrate the anxieties surrounding debates about acting and its subversive potential, and the complex cultural appropriation of “foreign” drama in late eighteenth-century Britain. Additionally, the author shows how Devonshire's ambivalent comments on Genlis in her correspondence reflect her anxieties about her own authorship. Finally, the article briefly assesses the affinities between experimental “closet drama”, pedagogical plays and elite culture.

Monstrous Society: Reciprocity, Discipline, and the Political Uncanny, c. 1780–1848 by David Collings

David Collings. Monstrous Society: Reciprocity, Discipline, and the Political Uncanny, c. 1780-1848. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2009. Pp. 332. $61.50. David Collings's Monstrous Society is a subtle and ambitious book with a dual focus. In its broadest terms, the book offers an account of England's transition from the early modern period into modernity, a transformation that Collings dates to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The subsidiary theme that drives much of the book's argument is the contention that the emergence of Gothic literature in this period represents both the demonization of the plebeian body and the resistance of that body when its claims to expression were delegitimized by official discourses such as Edmund Burke's appeals to natural law, Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism, and Thomas Malthus's work on economy. Collings takes up the standard account of the shift from early modern to fully modern England as a transition from a customary social order grounded in embodied practices to a constitutional society based on codified principles. With this narrative as a point of departure, he argues that the concept of that depicts premodern societies as more organic formations than modern ones is mistaken. While both traditional and Marxist accounts of early modern English society describe reciprocity as a sign of mutual recognition between the propertied and plebeian classes, Collings argues that the reversibility of power demonstrated in social rituals like bread riots does not demonstrate the mutual recognition of legitimate interests but shows the effects of a structural antagonism. This thesis has two significant implications. The first is that antagonism is not a modern social phenomenon, dependent on the spread of literacy and the articulation of interests in written form; it is a fundamental feature of early modern society that was expressed in embodied practices. The second implication is that the belief that we inhabit a world of political modernity separated from the by an epistemic abyss is illusory. Collings argues for the necessity of a nonmodern historiography, one that does not rely for its premises on the notion of a break from the past (19). What does change in late eighteenth century England, Collings argues, is the representation of the bodies involved in this structure of antagonism. Defenders of the propertied class, such as Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Thomas Malthus, now claim to deduce public policy from an expert mastery of natural law (20). The effect of this claim is to deny the plebeians the right to demand accountability from the ruling class; when social arrangements are imagined not as expressions of class interest but as effects of natural law, the ruling class disappears from view and plebeian counterforce is figured as a monstrous violation of the natural. The subtlety of the argument in Monstrous Society involves the articulation of the rhetoric of economic determinism with the metaphorics of the body. While the originary, premodern conception of natural rights that informs bread riots is collective, modern discourse imagines subjects in terms of individual sovereignty and universal equivalence. Defenses of the classical body, whether in Burke's accounts of the beauty of Marie Antoinette or in Bentham's valorization of individuality, deny the rights of the plebeian body. Where carnivalesque rituals assert a reversibility of power along a vertical axis of high and low, in the modern era the delegitimation of power from below takes the form of the hyperbolization of the grotesque, carnivalesque body into a monstrous body. The Gothic investment in tortured, ghostly, and deformed bodies reasserts the claims of the negated collective (22) of plebeian counterpower. In Collings's account of the birth of modern English discourse, the possibility of revolution is crucial to converting the reversible present of carnival into revolutionary history: Revolution shifts the symbolic reversal of social norms into the process of their literal transformation; its axis is not high/low but past/future (46). …

The Resistance of Words and the Challenge of Images: Visual Writing in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

The Resistance of Words and the Challenge of Images: Visual Writing in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

Emotions in Translation: Helen Maria Williams and “Beauties Peculiar to the English Language”

Emotions in Translation: Helen Maria Williams and “Beauties Peculiar to the English Language” Louise Joy (bio) Louise Joy Homerton College, Cambridge, UK Louise Joy Louise Joy is Lecturer in English at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. Her essays have appeared in The European Romantic Review and The History of European Ideas. She is co-editor of Poetry and Childhood (2010). Footnotes 1. Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, The Indian Cottage, or, a Search after Truth (Workington, 1797), 108. 2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, vol. 1 of Eloisa, or a Series of Original Letters, trans. William Kenrick, rev. ed., 4 vols. (London, 1803), viii. 3. In 1773, Kenrick published a revised edition of Eloisa in which he changed the heroine’s name to an anglicized version of Rousseau’s original. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julia: or, The New Eloisa, trans. William Kenrick, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1773). But this revised edition never captured the popular imagination in the same way, and it was the earlier Eloisa text that continued to be reprinted. For an account of how the novel Rousseau entitled Julie became known as La Nouvelle Héloïse to the French and as Eloisa to the British, see Philip Stewart, “Half-Title: or Julie Beheaded,” Romantic Review 86 (1995): 30–44. 4. Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard,” in Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, by Several Hands (London, 1722). For example, in his Essays: On Music and Poetry, James Beattie quotes from the Pope epistle, identifying his source as “Pope’s Eloisa.” James Beattie, Essays: on Poetry and Music, as they Affect the Mind; on Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition; on the Usefulness of Classical Learning, 3rd ed. (London, 1779), 53. 5. For a more detailed discussion of the moral character of British readers in the eighteenth century, see Samuel Pickering, The Moral Tradition in English Fiction, 1785–1850 (Hanover, NH: University of New England, 1976). A useful account of the issues involved in the translation of French novels into English during the period is provided by Josephine Grieder, Translations of French Sentimental Prose Fiction in Late Eighteenth-Century England: The History of a Literary Vogue (Durham: Duke University Press, 1975). 6. Much has been written about the representation of women in Rousseau’s work. For a useful window on these discussions, see Linda Zerilli, Signifying Woman: Culture and Chaos in Rousseau, Burke, and Mill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). For a discussion of how Helen Maria Williams is recurrently drawn to represent the figure of Julie (or “Eloisa”) in her prose works, see Nicola Watson, “Novel Eloisas: Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Narratives in Helen Maria Williams,” The Wordsworth Circle 23 (1992): 18–23. 7. The theologian and moral philosopher, Thomas Cogan, characterizes the difference between these two categories of the emotions: “the term passion...may with strict propriety, be used, and used exclusively, to represent the first feelings, the percussion as it were, of which the mind is conscious from some impulsive cause....The...term affection...supposes a more deliberate predilection and aversion.” Thomas Cogan, A Philosophical Treatise on the Passions, 2nd ed. (London, 1802), 6–9. 8. See Helen Maria Williams, Poems, 2 vols. (London, 1786). 9. See also Mary Hays, vol. 1 of Memoirs of Emma Courtney, 2 vols. (London, 1796), 41 and Thomas Holcroft, vol. 4 of Anna St. lves: A Novel, 7 vols. (London, 1792), 151. For a sustained analysis of the role Rousseau’s novel plays in eighteenth-century debates about the emotions, see Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Rousseau, trans. Peter Gay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). 10. Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman; or, Maria, vol. 2 of Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 4 vols. (London, 1798), 42. 11. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (London: Allen Lane, 1984), 242–43. 12. Edmund Burke, A Letter from Mr. Burke to a Member of the National Assembly; in Answer to Some Objections to his Book on French Affairs (Paris, 1791), 32–33. 13. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, &c. &c. in a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris, rev. ed...

Catholicism, Apostasy and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century England: The Case of Sir Thomas Gascoigne and Charles Howard, Earl of Surrey

Apostasy among the English Catholic gentry in the late eighteenth century was not uncommon. In this period contemporary Catholic observers were concerned by what they perceived to be a great qualitative decrease of English Catholic gentry and they regarded apostasy as ‘a major and catastrophic cause of the decline’. Conformity to the established religion was a social virtue and was rewarded with social advantages; it was part and parcel of one's rise in the social scale and so was a great temptation for gentlemen outside the Anglican fold who were desirous of a service or parliamentary career. In almost every county in England many heads of old English Catholic families conformed. Indeed, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, of the twenty-four Catholic gentry families that existed in the Riding in. 1706 only twelve remained by 1780. Between the years 1754–1790 seven members of the House of Commons had renounced Roman Catholicism in order to pursue political careers and according to the contemporary Catholic priest Joseph Berington, by 1780 there were but 177 landed Catholic families in England ten of which had either died out or recently abjured their faith. Just a few conversions could have devastating consequences for Catholic communities. As David Butler points out, often ‘Catholic missions were over-dependent on the Catholic aristocracy and gentry for the continuance of Catholic worship’ and for Butler, in eighteenth-century London alone, if ‘just eight prominent families had apostatised … the Catholic missions would have lost about half of their numbers’.

Writing Law and Speaking Justice in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

Writing Law and Speaking Justice in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America (review)

Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. By J. D. Bowers. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Pp. 282. Cloth, $50.00; Paper, $28.00.)Reviewed by David J. VoelkerAn old gibe declares that American Unitarians believe in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Boston. Accordingly, most historians have emphasized the New England roots of die denomination's history. Two recent books, however, challenge the Boston-centered account of American Unitarianism. John Allen Macaulay's Unitarianism in the Antebellum South (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2001) argues that English Unitarianism inspired a number of southern congregations. J. D. Bowers goes further, contending that English Unitarians, led by Joseph Priestley, founded a Unitarian movement in America in the 1790s, well before Unitarianism emerged as a distinct denomination in New England.Bowers is at his strongest when he is charting the theological conflicts among the English Unitarians and the liberal and orthodox Congregationalists of New England. He best sums up his core analysis as follows: [English] Socinians were pitted against [New England] Arians in a heavily contested dispute over ownership of the Unitarian name, the parameters of theological liberalism, and the very identity of Unitarianism itself. Congregationalists and other Trinitarians were only too happy to fan the flames and watch the two competing groups rend liberalism asunder (152). Bowers shows that by the 1820s New England liberals, led by William Ellery Charming, had successfully laid claim to the Unitarian label while denying any affiliation with the English Unitarians, who meanwhile failed to organize a sustainable denominational structure. By the late nineteenth century, Bowers notes, at least some Unitarians recognized Priestley's influence on their denomination's increasingly liberal beliefs. But he argues that historians have failed to appreciate Priestley's significance.Bowers briefly charts the development of a dissenting Unitarian tradition in late eighteenth-century England under the leadership of Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey. English Unitarians argued for the humanity of Jesus, accepting Socinian views, but they saw themselves as reformers rather than opponents of Christianity. As a small minority in England, Unitarians were often criticized for their beliefs. More dramatically, in 1791 Priestley fell victim to a riot in Birmingham that destroyed his home, laboratory, and chapel, as well as the property of other dissenters. In 1794, Priestley moved to the fledgling United States to pursue his scientific work and promote Unitarianism. (Bowers might have delved more deeply into the riot and its connection to Priestley's move.)As Bowers shows, Priestley was one of several English Unitarian clergymen who immigrated to the United States during the postRevolutionary period in search of a more congenial atmosphere for promoting their beliefs, only to meet fierce resistance. Priestley himself settled in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he founded a long-lived Unitarian church and published a number of Unitarian works. Bowers notes that at least twenty other English Unitarian churches were founded in the United States during this period. He ably shows that orthodox Christian apologists fiercely criticized the English Unitarians for their Socinian denial of Christ's divinity, unintentionally making Unitarian ideas more widely familiar.Bowers also explains why the relationship between English Unitarians and the liberal Congregationalists in New England remained chilly, despite their shared rationalist bent. The religious liberals of the Boston area held Arminian views (rejecting orthodox Calvinist doctrine regarding predestination) and tended toward Arianism (seeing Jesus as more than human but subordinate to God). …

Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance (review)

Reviewed by: Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance Ellen T. Harris Leslie Ritchie, Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008). Pp. xi, 269. $114.95. The place of women in eighteenth-century music-making has generally been relegated in modern scholarship to that of domestic performer or, in the realm of professional music, to ardent fan or patron. Leslie Ritchie seeks to overturn this long-held conviction, in part by expanding the definition of “women writing music.” She lays out the five tenets underlying her argument in the introduction: first, the assumed connection between social harmony and music harmony was not absolute (4–11); second, performance was part of the creative process; third, public and private performances were less differentiated than previously thought (“to speak radically, there is no such thing as private music” [19]); fourth, “derogatory assumptions . . . underlie the modern distinction between art songs and popular songs,” which existed on a continuum (21); and fifth, eighteenth-century music-making was “profoundly multidisciplinary” (24). Then limiting her discussion to vocal music, Ritchie includes not only composers but authors of song texts and singers as part of the process of writing music. Ritchie rebuts the belief that women who participated in making music shied away from public notice and desired anonymity. Her examination of the list of compositions registered at Stationers’ Hall during the eighteenth century shows that of the composers only 8 percent were women, but of these, 73 percent identified themselves by name, “rather than as ‘A Lady’ or ‘A Woman of Quality’ or a similar denomination” (72). Indeed, the desire for recognition and a kind of copyright led some women (and men) to claim registration without having actually done so. Further, the importance of the role of women in the creation of music can be seen in the statistic that 42 percent of the performers named on registered musical compositions were women. Ritchie also seeks to complicate the notion that music harmony and social harmony were synonymous. Although she acknowledges the place of music in the [End Page 538] lives of many eighteenth-century women, especially as described by their male contemporaries, as a useful discipline, a reinforcement (through text) of social mores, and an important part of courtship ritual, she argues that “women’s pleasure in music can be understood as both subservient to and, sometimes, subversive of moral discipline and the social purposes that musical practice was thought to serve” (31). She divides women’s song repertoire into three “dominant categories” of charity (Caritas), pastoral (Arcadia), and politics/nation (Britannia), and discusses specific examples that demonstrate “the ways in which women strategically exploited these categories’ boundaries” (28). There is a great deal of value in Ritchie’s evidence and argument. As a musicologist working with both musical and literary materials, I know the pitfalls of a multidisciplinary undertaking, and Ritchie handles the terrain with some panache. She certainly does not slight the music: her book is rich with musical example and facsimile, and she doesn’t shy away from musical analysis. In fact, I wonder what readers will think of the sentence: “Harmonically, the tune is set in D major, and uses various inversions of the chords of D major, b minor, G major and A major (as well as an E major chord that functions as an applied dominant for A major) in its simple accompaniment” (122–3). Unfortunately, Ritchie does not provide the music for this example. I can only assume that difficulties in acquiring the necessary permissions led to the situation whereby some of the most detailed analyses are not accompanied by examples, but simpler songs given less detailed discussions are provided in full (e.g., the modified strophic song, “Crazy Jane” [112–5]). There are more serious problems, however. The conclusions drawn by Ritchie are too often unwarranted from the evidence she provides. She claims that James Grassineau in his Musical Dictionary of 1740 defines “harmony” with a set of binary opposites (“one / many; pleasing / codified; natural / scientific” [4]), which simply are not there. Similarly, she draws from Grassineau’s definition of “testo...

Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity in Late Eighteenth-Century England. By Matthew J. Kinservik. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; pp. 272. $80 cloth. - Women, Sociability and Theatre in Georgian London. By Gillian Russell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007; pp. 308. $110 cloth.

Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity in Late Eighteenth-Century England. By Matthew J. Kinservik. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; pp. 272. $80 cloth. - Women, Sociability and Theatre in Georgian London. By Gillian Russell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007; pp. 308. $110 cloth.

‘De scharpheit van een gladde tong’. Literaire teksten en publieke opinievorming in de vroegmoderne Nederlanden

‘The Sharpness of a Smooth Tongue’. Literary Texts and the Formation of Public Opinion in the Early Modern NetherlandsThe Low Countries hardly play any role in international debates about the history of the formation of public opinion in early modern Europe. In the wake of Jürgen Habermas, historians have focused in particular on late seventeenthand eighteenth-century England and France. Scholars have criticised the notion that it was during the eighteenth century that the formation of free public opinion came into existence due to a combination of the periodical press, its critical role and a national readership. Nevertheless, the period before 1700 is hardly referred to at all during discussions about the role of public opinion. During that time a permanent, structured public openness did not exist. However, in the early modern Low Countries many socio-cultural and institutional conditions seem to be present which made the formation of critical public opinion among the population possible. The literary culture of these regions offers an important research subject for studies into the formation of public opinion.

Petrarch in Romantic England by Edoardo Zuccato

822 Reviews Jose Ricardo Chaves, 'Romanticism, Occultism and the Fantastic in Spain and Latin America'. Takayuki Yokota-Murakami provides a perspective from Japan, 'Romantic Prose Fiction in Modern Japan: Finding an Expression against theGrain', and A. Owen Aldridge also presents a thoroughly international comparison in 'Ludic Prose from Laurence Stern to Carlos Fuentes'. The impact of Romantic prose fiction on subsequent movements and media is explored in Jeanne J.Smoot, 'Romantic Thought and Style in 19th Century Realism and Naturalism', JoelBlack, 'Romantic Legacies in Fin-de-siecle and Early 20th Century Fiction', and Elaine Martin, 'Rewrites and Remakes: Screen Adaptations ofRomantic Works'. There is always a riskwith any volume of this nature?one which aims to cover such a broad range ofmaterial, themes, and cultures?that key aspects will remain underexplored or even overlooked. The editors of this volume are to be compli mented, therefore, on the comprehensive nature and quality of the studies they include. The impressive range of contributors is testimony in itselfto the standard of scholarship on show,with some of the leading names in the field featuring promi nently. There is also a notably international array of contributors, something crucial to but often absent from such volumes which claim comprehensive coverage and a comparative approach. In choosing such an array, the editors have managed to ne gotiate thepotential pitfalls surrounding such comparative works, which perversely often fail to represent a trulybroad range of approaches and cultural diversities. The volume ends with a full listing of the contents of all five volumes in the subseries. The range ofmaterial covered is impressive and, even at a glance, it is clear what a mammoth undertaking this has been. The current volume isvaluable in itselfbut, seen in the context of the entire subseries, itbecomes clear that the editors have created an invaluable critical resource which would greatly enhance any scholarly library. Bangor University Carol Tully Petrarch in Romantic England. By Edoardo Zuccato. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. xiv+241 pp. ?50. ISBN 978-0-230-54260-0. 'Petrarch in Romantic England? Surely thatmust be a misprint for Renaissance England', says Edoardo Zuccato in the introduction to his book: 'Few readers, or even scholars, would think of Romanticism as a Petrarchan age. And theywould be right for every European country except England. The Petrarchan revival in late eighteenth-century England was a unique phenomenon' (p. iv). He does not elaborate on the uniqueness' of English Romantic Petrarchism, which perhaps needs a few words of qualification, but he does provide ample evidence of the extent and significance of thewave of interest in Petrarch at this time inminor and major writers alike?especially women writers, Charlotte Smith, Anna Seward, and Mary Robinson prominent among them. And among themajor poets he devotes substantial sections toColeridge above all, but also to Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, all ofwhom, in one way or another, could not avoid some response to the contemporary interest in the Italian poet. MLR, 104.3, 2009 823 Two main themes emerge. The first is the interest inPetrarch's lifeand the nature of his relationship with Laura, provoked initially by theAbbe de Sade's Memoires pour la vie de Francois Retrarque (1764) and the abridged English translation published by Susanna Dobson in 1775. Sade's insistence that Laura was married to an ancestor ofhis towhom she bore eleven children came as a shock tomany English admirers of the poet, who objected to this carnal' Petrarch and the implication of adultery. Dobson toned down the intensity of Petrarch's passion for Laura, not sharing Sade's view that even a virgin could read Petrarch without blushing. Zuccato makes a good case for his major contention that the Canzoniere was received by English readers of the period essentially like a novel of sensibility?and that this was the secret of Petrarch's popularity, particularly with the female public. Against this themore robustmale readers reacted, notably Byron, who at one point spoke of Petrarch as a 'metaphysical whining dotard': 'Think you ifLaura had been Petrarch's wife I He would have written sonnets all his life?'.At the same time Byron, following Sismondi and Foscolo, criticized Petrarch's political stance, setting his readiness to compromise with...

The Sanctification and Democratisation of "the Nation" and "the People" in Late Eighteenth-Century Northwestern Europe

This paper suggests that the study of the modernisation of European political cultures in the eighteenth century would greatly benefit from a comparative conceptual historical approach. is approach would effect the reconstruction of a variety of meanings attached to chosen political concepts in different national contexts through the side-by-side analysis of primary sources originating from each case according to the methodology of both historical semantics and pragmatics. A promising research topic is the continuity and change in the conceptualisation of national community, national identity, popular sovereignty and democracy in various European political cultures. e conceptual analyses of late eighteenth-century political sermons from five northwestern European countries, conducted by the author, for example, reveal that conceptual changes related to the rise of nationalism took place even within public religion, allowing it to adapt itself to the age of nationalism. Further analysis of the secular debates taking place in representative bodies and public discourse in late eighteenth-century Britain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden elucidates the gradual development of the notion that all political power is ultimately derived from the people and that such a system constituted a "democracy" in a positive sense within different parliamentary traditions and perhaps even before the French Revolution.

Did Boulton Sell Silver Plate to the Middle Class? A Quantitative Study of Luxury Marketing in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

This article analyzes sales of silver plate to different social classes by Matthew Boulton (1728-1809), an English entrepreneur and manufacturer. He claimed that efficient techniques used in his manufactory would decrease prices so that less affluent people could afford silver plate. Data from this research show that the vast majority of his orders came from the upper classes. Obviously, there was a disjunction between Boulton’s claim and his actions. We believe that this is the first quantitative study of the social-class composition of customers for a luxury product from a single factory. It marks a step (however tentative) in the measurement of luxury marketing in the late eighteenth century to consumers other than the rich.

Parliament, Print Culture and Petitioning in Late Eighteenth‐Century England

Parliament, Print Culture and Petitioning in Late Eighteenth‐Century England

The Print Culture of Parliament, 1600–1800

JASON PEACEY, The Print Culture of Parliament, 1600-1800 CHRIS R. KYLE, From Broadside to Pamphlet: Print and Parliament in the Late 1620s JASON PEACEY, Print Culture and Political Lobbying During the English Civil Wars MARK KNIGHTS, Parliament, Print and Corruption in Later Stuart Britain MICHAEL HARRIS, Parliament in the Public Sphere: A View of Serial Coverage at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century BOB HARRIS, Parliamentary Legislation, Lobbying, and the Press in the Eighteenth Century Scotland JAMES E. BRADLEY, Parliament, Print Culture, and Petitioning in Late Eighteenth-Century England IAN HARRIS, Publishing Parliamentary Oratory: The Case of Edmund Burke Index.