Late Eighteenth-century Britain Research Articles

Ian Haywood and John Seed, eds., The Gordon Riots: Politics, culture and insurrection in late eighteenth-century Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012; paperback edn. 2014, pp. xiii+288, £19.99, ISBN: 978-1-107-47984-5

Ian Haywood and John Seed, eds., The Gordon Riots: Politics, culture and insurrection in late eighteenth-century Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012; paperback edn. 2014, pp. xiii+288, £19.99, ISBN: 978-1-107-47984-5 - Volume 33 Issue 1

“Made to Feel Wretched”: Royall Tyler and the Trouble with Global Sympathy

I pity you too, replied I, the tears standing in my eyes. --The Algerine Captive At a key moment in the middle of The Algerine Captive (1797), Royall Tyler sends his American narrator, Updike Underhill, to Africa aboard The Sympathy. The slave ship's allegorical name is just one of numerous signs that the novel is concerned with sentiment. Beyond signaling this attention to feeling, The Sympathy invites us to recognize that sentiment carries Underhill into a series of fraught cross-cultural encounters. Tyler conveys the influence of these encounters through depictions of Underhill's affect, including recurring scenes of sympathetic crying, such as the one quoted in the epigraph (126). These scenes suggest that the protagonist cannot resist expressing sympathy for foreign peoples, even as his tears signal the pain and vulnerability that compassion creates. For instance, when Underhill comes to pity enslaved Africans aboard The Sympathy, his sentiment simultaneously attests to his power as an American and destabilizes it through his identification with slaves. Attending to such depictions of affect, this essay builds on prior arguments that sentimental literature of the 1790s expresses anxiety about the tenuous cohesion of the United States to tease out Tyler's concern with how feeling influences international relations and thereby shapes national identity. (1) I contend that his novel illuminates the vital role of foreign sympathy--meaning both Americans' feelings for those outside their country and the compassion they elicit from foreign peoples--in early American literature. Through his depictions of cross-cultural bonds that appear both appealing and troubling, Tyler explores a question central to his work: could Americans create a stable national identity? This concern, evidenced in his earlier play The Contrast (1787), resurfaces throughout The Algerine Captive. The novel begins with a brief narrative of the Puritan past and transatlantic encounters of the 1630s, then jumps ahead to the 1780s to tell the story of its narrator, a Puritan descendant, as he commences a picaresque-style journey. Underhill travels the United States to pursue education and employment. Unable to make a living, he becomes a ship's doctor. His global voyages prove even more unsettling than his efforts to make a home in the United States, as Underhill participates in the slave trade and falls captive to Algerian pirates. By developing themes of rootlessness, slavery, and captivity, Tyler's novel dramatizes pervasive concerns over the potential dissolution of domestic bonds and the destabilizing effects of foreign relations, which preoccupied Americans in the decades following the Revolutionary War. To address these anxieties over the United States and its role in the global sphere, writers and political leaders alike turned to eighteenth-century theories of sentiment. (2) Political rhetoric of the day presumed that shared feeling functioned as a measure of virtue. By imaginatively entering into others' feelings, spectators both signaled their own worth based on their compassion and conferred worth on deserving objects of sympathy whose suffering mattered. For instance, both Kwame Anthony Appiah and Lynn Hunt argue that as the discourses of human rights and abolition emerged in late eighteenth-century England, the British asserted their moral sensibility through their display of sympathy for foreign peoples. In this context, representing US citizens as sympathetic, in part, promised national stability. Not only did the founding fathers suggest that the nation depended on shared feeling to link fellow citizens, but Tyler and a number of contemporary writers asserted that Americans' identity and moral standing in the global sphere likewise depended on their display (or lack) of compassion. (3) Sympathy acquired particular importance as Americans faced the task of redefining their relations both to one another and to the global sphere following the Revolutionary War. …

The ichneumon fly and the equilibration of British natural economies in the eighteenth century.

The parasitic ichneumon fly, discovered by European natural philosophers in the seventeenth century, remained largely unstudied until it captured the attention of Enlightenment-era natural historians. Although this sudden surge of interest has been explained as an effort to understand the natural 'evil' of parasitism, the heyday of ichneumon studies was actually inspired by the political and agricultural context of late eighteenth-century Britain. British naturalists were captivated by this insect for reasons both philosophical and practical. In the providentially self-equilibrating qualities of 'natural' ichneumon economies, they saw solutions to political problems of famine, dearth, national wealth, governance and excess population, in addition to finding reassurance that Enlightened confidence in nature's inherent stability and fruitfulness was not unfounded.

John Trusler and the Culture of Sermons in Late Eighteenth-Century England

Using John Trusler's unpublished memoirs, this article seeks to reconsider his trade in printed sermons using imitation manuscript print, which clergy could pass off as their own. While the trade smacks of corruption and dishonesty, and attracted considerable scorn for Trusler, it was in some respects a reflection of late eighteenth-century sermon culture. Trusler's defence to Bishop Terrick of London of trading in imitation manuscript sermons suggests that he was not embarrassed by the enterprise. Trusler's talents as a preacher were considerable, but Victorian Britain came to regard his commerce as reprehensible.

The Criminal Corpse, Anatomists and the Criminal Law: Parliamentary Attempts to Extend the Dissection of Offenders in Late Eighteenth-Century England.

In the later eighteenth century two schemes were introduced in Parliament for extending the practice of handing over the bodies of executed offenders to anatomists for dissection. Both measures were motivated by the needs of anatomy - including the improvement of surgical skill, the development of medical teaching in the provinces, and for conducting public anatomical demonstrations. Yet both failed to pass into law due to concerns about the possibly damaging effects in terms of criminal justice. Through a detailed analysis of the origins and progress of these two parliamentary measures - a moment when the competing claims of anatomy and criminal justice vied for supremacy over the criminal corpse - the following article sheds light on judicial attitudes to dissection as a method of punishment and adds to our understanding of why the dread of dissection would come to fall upon the dead poor (rather than executed offenders) in the nineteenth century.

From Townsend and Malthus to the Poor Law Report: An Examination of the Influence of Ideas Concerning the Relationship of Public Aid and Reproduction on Policy Development, 1786-1834

From Townsend and Malthus to the Poor Law Report: An Examination of the Influence of Ideas Concerning the Relationship of Public Aid and Reproduction on Policy Development, 1786-1834 Stephen Monroe Tomczak Abstract Current welfare policies denying additional benefits to women who have children while on assistance are premised on the idea that the giving of aid causes reproduction, an idea that has its origins in earlier debates over aid policy. This paper examines ideas concerning the relationship of public aid policy to reproduction by its recipients in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England, and the influence of these ideas on the poor law policy of the period. The thoughts of leading theorists on this relationship, such as early political economists Joseph Townsend and Thomas Robert Malthus, are analyzed. This examination shows that these theorists asserted that the giving of aid led to reproduction by its recipients. Further analysis of proposed and enacted policies, particularly the Poor Law Reform of 1834, shows that these ideas asserting a relationship between poor relief and reproduction appear to have influenced policy in this era. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jssw.v3n2a4

John Edwards (1637–1716) on Human Free Choice and Divine Necessity: The Debate on the Relation between Divine Necessity and Human Freedom in Late Seventeenth-Century and Early Eighteenth-Century England, written by Jeongmo Yoo

John Edwards (1637–1716) on Human Free Choice and Divine Necessity: The Debate on the Relation between Divine Necessity and Human Freedom in Late Seventeenth-Century and Early Eighteenth-Century England, written by Jeongmo Yoo

Westminster Abbey and the Academy of Ancient Music: A Library once Lost and now Partially Recovered

As the first body anywhere to concern itself with the performance of ‘early’ music, the Academy of Ancient Music (founded in 1726) is of some historical importance. When, in 1802, the society was eventually disbanded, its famous library was broken up and dispersed via the London sale rooms. Later on, some fifty or so manuscripts and a small group of prints somehow found their way into the library of Westminster Abbey, where they have lain unnoticed ever since. Included in the collection are several anthologies of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century madrigals and motets, but also, and more importantly, a large number of orchestrally accompanied psalm settings and mass movements by a variety of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century composers, mainly Italian, chief among whom are Bassani, Bononcini, Colonna, Lotti, and Pergolesi, as well as the virtually unknown Francesco Negri, whose Gloria was hugely popular in late eighteenth-century England. Also included is the autograph of yet another Crucifixus setting by Antonio Lotti, most probably written for the Academy in 1731, and a totally unknown stile antico setting of the Credo composed for them by Fortunato Chelleri, who was briefly a member in 1726–7. This article identifies all those manuscripts (and prints) in the Westminster Abbey collection (and elsewhere) which were once in the Academy’s library or were in some way connected with that body of musicians.

‘Nothing but a Birmingham jury can save them’: Prosecuting Rioters in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

This article explores the working of the Riot Act and the provision it provided for the implementation of penal law in late eighteenth-century Britain. Using the Birmingham Priestley Riots of 1791 as a case study, the article examines the complexities of prosecuting rioters in this period. Contemporaries and historians have widely condemned the authorities’ efforts to bring the Birmingham rioters to justice. It is suggested here that the selective, discretionary nature of eighteenth-century law as well as the complex interactions between central government, local authorities, and the local community made prosecuting rioters a difficult exercise that could result in indiscriminate outcomes in any given case.

The Voice of Martha Ray

In 1798 Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth published a collection of poems entitled Lyrical Ballads. It is now critically acclaimed to be one of the defining moments in the history of English poetry. In the renowned Preface to the collection, Wordsworth asserted that they were intended to “speak a plainer and more emphatic language,” the “language really used by men.” One of the poems found in the Ballads was entitled The Thorn. Wordsworth later claimed that he wrote it whilst walking the Quantock Hills one wind-battered day. Its subject was child-murder and it purported to tell the story of Martha Ray. Few subjects were better calculated to engage public attention. Infanticide “scares” were frequent in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England, discussion as to the efficacy or otherwise of infanticide law urgently engaged in parliament, in the press, and in popular literature. The Thorn remains one of the most striking contributions to this latter genre; a poem which was intended to make its readers contemplate rather more deeply the apparent injustices written into the law of child-murder in late eighteenth century England.

Approaching the Interior of the Eighteenth-Century English Country House

late eighteenth century England, term became noun, with very specific architectural meaning. As verb, of course, it primarily meant the act of drawing near (Johnson's Dictionary, 1755). (1) Humphry Repton (1752-1818), inventor of term gardening, conceptualized idea of approach as carefully designed experience perspective, drive from lodges at entrance of an estate through most interesting part of grounds, and ... displaying] of place to greatest advantage (Observations 34). John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843), Scottish botanist and Reptonian landscape planner, defined his Treatise on Forming, Improving, and Managing Country Residences (1806) as a variety of road peculiar to house country. direction it should, on one hand, neither be affectedly graceful or waving ...; nor, on other, vulgarly rectilineal, direct, or abrupt (2:590; original emphasis). The approach should form new on every movement of spectator (2:591). This idea of approach as constructed experience, predicated on movement, is part of picturesque aesthetic, of course, but it more largely might be characterized as part of shifting cultural interest angles of perception variety of modes. In ancient style, grand object is, to obtain straight line, Loudon explains, while in modern style, winding is preferred, as being more easy and natural, and ... displaying greater variety of scenery (Encyclopedia 769). Not just architecture but whole host of cultural enterprises were becoming interested something other than straight as way of approaching something else. this essay I will use historically specific concept of architectural approach to enter interiors of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novels from different perspective. I make three intertwined claims. First, architectural treatises and novels self-consciously invoked each other. Any Austen reader knows how often her characters call on Repton to improve their estates. And as Peter Collins argues, [i]t was desire to live experiences of novel which constituted original essence of architectural romanticism (39). synchronized step with novel, narratives of architectural manuals and guides to country estates became increasingly interested describing domestic interiors. Second, these descriptions adopt patterns that take a winding line and form new combinations for reader, both visually and narratively, on approaching and entering house. The approach is perspectival, reflecting what Collins sees as eighteenth-century architectural interest parallax, or the apparent displacement of objects caused by an actual change point of observation (27). That is, architecture, things (objects, buildings, views) are designed to produce perception of movement observer. I argue that narrative strategies of architectural manuals, country house guides, and novels attempt same effect. Narrative parallax, we might say, is achieved when one sentence winds into next for different perspective, as new approach of free indirect discourse to psychological interiors. And third, perceptual experiences of changing perspectives--these designed approaches architecture, country house tours, and novels--find common linguistic denominator changing grammatical and typographical landscape, away from objects and things (and capitalized common nouns) to spaces between (verbs and participles, prepositions and adjectives). (2) A preposition, as defined by one nineteenth-century grammarian, is word that enter[s] into complex proposition, combination with Noun or Pronoun, to express some relation (Fowler 319). period where dominant aesthetic was picturesque, architecture was parallaxed, approach was winding, and narrative explored indirect, we could say that cultural perspective was tending towards prepositional. …

Fear of Fever and the Limits of the Enlightenment

ABSTRACTHistorians have exaggerated considerably the part played by enlightenment ideas in the birth of the modern prison in England. Analysis of ground-level reform activity in late eighteenth-century England shows that enlightenment penal theory failed to convince local officials that penal reforms should be adopted. Responding to the economic, political and cultural context in which they operated, reform-minded officials were required to abandon enlightenment discourse and adopt instead actively anti-enlightenment arguments and language. Only once reform was strategically repackaged as a solution to the lurking, hidden threat that was the ‘fever’ were recognisably modern prisons constructed in England.

Ian Haywood and John Seed, eds. The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 288. $95.00 (cloth).

Ian Haywood and John Seed, eds. The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 288. $95.00 (cloth). - Volume 52 Issue 4

Isaac D'Israeli and the invention of the literary character

Isaac D'Israeli's work on the literary character offers a distinctive analysis of the relation between the literary and history in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain. He argues that character can be constructed and shaped by literary activity. The literary character also has common traits across the ages and can be seen as a trans-historical ideal that has tangible, empirical effects. Isolated and part of a solitary community, the literary character is marked by an inherited disinheritance and dislocation from its own time and place. D'Israeli's account of the literary character suggests the need to re-think the relation between the literary and history.

The Romantic Prospects of the Duke of Richmond's Moose

George Stubbs's painting The Duke of Richmond's First Bull Moose (1770) offers a visual counterpart to an arresting account addressed to the naturalist Thomas Pennant in Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne of his 1768 visit to inspect the Duke of Richmond's recently deceased female “moose-deer.” The Duke was one of several aristocrats who acquired moose from Canada; his animals were studied by White, by Pennant, and by the physician and anatomist William Hunter who commissioned Stubbs's work. While Stubbs depicted the animal accurately, he had no knowledge of its natural habitat; the moose is incongruously placed in a mountainous lake landscape during an approaching storm. This romanticized landscape prospect offers a metaphor for the story of the moose in late eighteenth-century Britain. While looking forward and outward to understand the natural world, these depictions of the moose are equally subjective and imaginative and contributed to debates on extinction and the idea of species. The unsuccessful introduction of the moose to Britain defeated prospects for their domestication and cross-breeding. Close reading of Stubbs's painting, White's narrative, Pennant's Arctic Zoology, and Hunter's unpublished scientific paper on the moose suggest the kinds of wonder which mark the efforts on the part of science and the arts to understand this puzzling and mysterious animal.

The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney: Music and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century England by Philip Olleson (review)

The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney: Music and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century England. By Philip Olleson. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. [xxi, 334 p. ISBN 9780754655923. $134.95.] Illustra - tions, bibliography, index.England's musical landscape once teemed with Burneys. Today the family's patriarch looms largest: Charles Burney transformed his station as a promising provincial musician to Doctor of Music and the foremost music historian of his day. Many still turn to his four-volume History of Music (1776-89), a historiographical landmark and a chronicle of musical life in the late eighteenth century. Music-literary aptitude was not limited to Dr. Burney, however. Daughters Frances (Fanny) and Sarah prospered as novelists, while Susan, between them in age, captured in journals and letters a London music scene satiated on pasticcio and overrun by continental musicians. In a volume of fine craftsmanship, Philip Olleson delivers Susan's letters and journals from manuscript sources.The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney opens with a lengthy biographical introduction. Susan was born in 1755. She was regarded as a lively child and a talented student in schools in Paris and London. She circulated in London's musical scene during her adolescence and young adulthood. An engagement, marriage, and family followed, although her journals also record chronic marital tension.The volume is largely concerned with Susan's accounts of musical activities. Olleson picks up at the opening of the King's Theatre's 1779-80 opera season, when Susan recounts in considerable detail works by Antonio Sacchini, Ferdinando Bertoni, and Niccolo Piccinni as well as several pasticcios. She also chronicled encounters with the theater's colorful personalities. Castrato Gasparo Pacchierotti receives the most attention. The space he occupies in Susan's journals may be disproportionate even to his station as primo uomo. Susan's words admit a possible infatuation: [he] was so perfectly in tune, & so touching in his Expression that I c[ould] have woship'd him (p. 107). Apart from this, these passages are remarkable also in the way they traverse private life and the public sphere. For instance, Pacchierotti at once projected on stage a celebrity persona while revealing in intimate conversation modesty and even self-doubt.Self-doubt consumes Susan as well, especially when she is called on to play. She managed works of Ignace Joseph Pleyel but stressed over the music of Leopold Kozeluch and Joseph Haydn. She wrote about one such occasion: Forcing myself to attempt what I knew I c[ould] not execute, it ended as I had foreseen in general disappointment (p. 210). Her repertoire was almost exclusively modern. Susan rarely encountered ancient works (i.e., compositions older than a decade or two) or the leading composers of the previous generation (e.g., Corelli and Handel).Although not oriented toward musical activities, the journals and letters also capture the anti-Catholic furor of June 1780. During this time, Lord George Gordon challenged the Papist Act of 1778, which discouraged discrimination against Britain's Catholic population. The rioting that erupted following a Gordon-led march on Parliament on 2 June 1780 prompted Susan to fear for her family's safety and their home, as flames consumed the property and possessions of the neighbors. Despite several sleepless nights, her initial fear-our House w[ould] be burnt & Pillaged in all probability (p. 176)-gave way to confidence of peace when rioting subsided by 8 June.There are few entries from 1780-87, when Susan was in close proximity to her sister Fanny, the recipient of her letters. Susan resumed regular visits to London in 1787, and attended numerous musical performances over the next four years, although her presence was not as regular as it had been a decade earlier. …

The journals and letters of Susan Burney: music and society in late eighteenth-century England

Contents: General introduction Biographical introduction Textual introduction. The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney, 1779-1799: Streatham and Chessington, September 1779 London, October 1779-June 1780 Chessington, October 1780 Chessington, April 1783 Norbury Park, June 1784 Boulogne, February 1785 Mickleham, June 1786-March 1787 Windsor, April 1787 Mickleham and London, May 1787-July 1794 London, November 1795-September 1796 The journey to Ireland, October 1796 Dublin and Belcotton, October 1796-December 1799 Parkgate, December 1799 Bibliography Index.

Ideias versus redes sociais: ativismo à distância na Inglaterra do século XVIII

What are the historical sources for mobilizations around distant issues - one of the characteristic features of modernity? This article examines the social dynamics that led to the first sustained campaigns on distant issues in late eighteenth-century Britain. Their emergence is often understood to have been determined by the rise of new ideologies of humanitarian compassion during the period. To test the role of these ideologies, I compare two sets of campaigns: Edmund Burke's impeachment of Warrant Hastings and the series of religious mobilizations initiated with the movement against the colonial slave trade. While both campaigns were driven by similar cultural idioms of humanitarian concern, Burke's initiative failed to produce popular engagement, while the religious campaigns were able to mobilize wide groups of public supporters. This striking difference highlights the importance of religious associational networks for the emergence of the first modern instances of mobilization on distant issues.

The Arrest of Caleb Williams: Unnatural Crime, Constructive Violence, and Overwhelming Terror in Late Eighteenth-Century England

In the later eighteenth century, the twelve justices of the supreme English common law courts ruled repeatedly that blackmailing a man by threatening to accuse him of sodomitical practices constituted the capital offense of robbery; the judges focused on the overwhelming terror they claimed was unique to this threat. This legal doctrine is a covert presence in William Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams (1794). Ferdinando Falkland, fearing that his secret is about to be revealed by Caleb, accuses him of having “robbed” him, and even though Falkland’s secret is literally murder, the mutual persecution and mutual terrorizing that ensue evoke the relation between sodomy and blackmail.

Building a Heaven in Hell's Despair: The Everlasting Gospel of Revolution According to William Blake and Douglas Oliver

At the core of William Blake’s work lies the tension created by a subversive redefinition of good and evil which amounts to a fundamental rejection of orthodox Christian teaching in the Established Church of his time. Blake believed that the political Establishment of England had appropriated and corrupted the Christian faith, a process that had been accelerated by the Enlightenment, and that was taking his country to the edge of an apocalyptic crisis marked by the spread of revolutionary fervour from the eastern seaboard of North America to France. He believed that his subversive theology constituted a direct and perilous assault on the oppressive regime of ‘God & his Priest & King’ in late eighteenth-century England (I, 179, 11). This essay will explore aspects of Blake’s perception of good and evil with specific reference to the poetry of Douglas Oliver, who, like Blake, found inspiration for his politically subversive poetry of the 1980s in a pre-Enlightenment, pre-Industrial Christian mind-set reflected in Mediaeval poetry and art. Blake drew heavily on what he came to believe lay at the heart of Mediaeval Christian belief as it was revealed to him through many aspects of its art. As an apprentice engraver in the early 1770s he was sent to make drawings of the statuary in Westminster Abbey; this proved to be a formative experience. Of the writers in this period, he knew Chaucer well, and in 1964 Jean H. Hagstrum made a case for Blake’s first-hand knowledge of the fifteenth-century illuminated text, the Bedford Hours; in Blake as an Artist David Bindman is happier to suggest that Blake had ‘an acquaintance more with inheritors of this Mediaeval tradition than Mediaeval manuscripts themselves’. However it came about, the picture thus revealed to him was one of a vibrant spirituality that infused our entire mortal existence. This was a condition of life he believed had been bled out of the Nation by the hegemony of Classical art, a taste promoted by Augustan, Enlightenment rationalism epitomised for him in the careers of Francis Bacon (1561–1626), John Locke (1632–1704), and Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Over against the Augustan taste of his contemporaries concerned implicitly to promote