The production of urban histories in eighteenth-century England

Urban History ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Sweet
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
Urban Renaissance ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Much of our knowledge concerning the ‘urban renaissance’ in eighteenth-century provincial towns comes from a reading of contemporary urban histories. Too often they are referred to purely for their factual information, and insufficient consideration is given to their relationship to the society for which they were written. This article examines in detail the series of histories written in Newcastle over the long eighteenth century. Although the content of these histories can appear formulaic, with considerable borrowings of material, there are significant differences. These reflect the different agenda which the respective authors were addressing and the changing composition of the readership. Urban histories can provide an invaluable insight into the dynamics of urban society and the way in which contemporaries perceived and presented it.

The fossilist and his engraver: Samuel Springsguth’s illustrations of James Parkinson’s Organic Remains

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherry Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Parkinson’S Disease ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Parkinson's Disease ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Paralysis Agitans ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Organic Remains ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACT James Parkinson was an apothecary surgeon, political activist, and paleontologist during the latter part of the long eighteenth century. He is most famous for his 1817 work, An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, in which he was the first to describe and define the symptoms of paralysis agitans, a condition now known as Parkinson’s disease. During his lifetime, however, he was internationally renowned for his three-volume study of fossils, Organic Remains of a Former World. Sales of this work continued for 25 years after Parkinson’s death, even though much of its scientific content had become redundant. This was due to the beauty and fidelity of its illustrations, although Samuel Springsguth, the illustrator and engraver, is never explicitly acknowledged in the work. By examining several extant fossils known to have been in Parkinson’s collection and illustrated in his works, it has been possible to gain some insight into the way that Parkinson and Springsguth worked together when illustrating these volumes.

TWO RENAISSANCES: URBAN POLITICAL CULTURE IN POST-REFORMATION ENGLAND RECONSIDERED

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP WITHINGTON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Urban Renaissance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Reformation England ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Historiography

This review reconsiders the place and importance of urban political culture in England between c. 1550 and c. 1750. Relating recent work on urban political culture to trends in political, social, and cultural historiography, it argues that England's towns and boroughs underwent two ‘renaissances’ over the course of the period: a ‘civic renaissance’ and the better-known ‘urban renaissance’. The former was fashioned in the sixteenth century; however, its legacy continued to inform political thought and practice over 150 years later. Similarly, although the latter is generally associated with ‘the long eighteenth century’, its attributes can be traced to at least the Elizabethan era. While central to broader transitions in post-Reformation political culture, these ‘renaissances’ were crucial in restructuring the social relations and social identity of townsmen and women. They also constituted an important but generally neglected dynamic of England's seventeenth-century ‘troubles’.

The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Book Production ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
English Novel ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Insight Into

Although the emergence of the English novel is generally regarded as an eighteenth-century phenomenon, this is the first book to be published professing to cover the ‘eighteenth-century English novel’ in its entirety. This Handbook surveys the development of the English novel during the ‘long’ eighteenth century—in other words, from the later seventeenth century right through to the first three decades of the nineteenth century when, with the publication of the novels of Jane Austen and Walter Scott, ‘the novel’ finally gained critical acceptance and assumed the position of cultural hegemony it enjoyed for over a century. By situating the novels of the period which are still read today against the background of the hundreds published between 1660 and 1830, this Handbook covers not only those ‘masters and mistresses’ of early prose fiction—such as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Scott, and Austen—who are still acknowledged to be seminal figures in the emergence and development of the English novel, but also the significant number of recently rediscovered novelists who were popular in their own day. At the same time, its comprehensive coverage of cultural contexts not considered by any existing study, but which are central to the emergence of the novel—such as the book trade and the mechanics of book production, copyright and censorship, the growth of the reading public, the economics of culture both in London and in the provinces, and the reprinting of popular fiction after 1774—offers unique insight into the making of the English novel.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Cameron D. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Interesting Insight ◽  
Reform Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bourbon Reform ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Philosophical Structure ◽  
The Way

Chapter opens looking at the place of missions within political and philosophical structure of the Spanish empire. As Spain attempted to reform its empire in the eighteenth century in response to enlightenment concepts, it changed the way it conducted its frontier missions system. The history of the missionaries of Ocopa provided an interesting insight into these changes. They were generally seen as in line with enlightenment concepts, yet also a threat to the growing enlightenment inspired concept of royal absolutism. This study, therefore, fits within larger body of works on the Bourbon Reform period of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It argues that changes to the Spanish borderlands were a result of interactions between political actors throughout the empire.

A Long Eighteenth Century? What Eighteenth Century?

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Dejean
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
English Studies ◽  
The Many ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Way ◽  
New Look

When i agreed to contribute to this issue, i wanted to focus a debate about periodization for once solely on foreign languages and not, as is usually the case, on a single foreign language in comparison with English. To do this, I intended to take a new look at one of the most successful examples of the new periodization: the long eighteenth century. The concept first came to the fore and gained wide critical currency in English studies and in history. In these fields, a number of differently long eighteenth centuries have been proposed and practiced—an eighteenth century that begins as early as 1660, for example, and one that ends as late as 1832. Among the many consequences of the various choices of chronological limits for the long eighteenth century, probably the most significant is the way in which the Enlightenment's role is heightened or diminished in each version of the period. Since in intellectual and literary terms the Enlightenment's impact was felt all over western Europe in the 1700s, I decided that this should be one issue of periodization whose presence would be by now visible in most if not all modern foreign languages. As it turned out, I could not have been more wrong. And what I learned on the way to that realization caused me to shift course radically.

scholarly journals The Prisoner of War and the Eighteenth-Century Prison

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Randall McGowen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
European Society ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
The State ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fresh Insight ◽  
Insight Into

Britain and France were at war with each other for over half of the long eighteenth century. This period of sustained conflict produced immense changes, in both countries, in the character of the state and the course of economic development. Yet one of the most obvious ways in which contemporaries would have encountered the war was in the presence of large numbers of prisoners of war held by their country. Early in the century there were thousands of such captives, and by its end they numbered in the tens of thousands. Renaud Morieux takes this neglected topic for the focus of his multifaceted study. These prisoners created challenges that were legal and diplomatic, as well as administrative and financial. The citizens of each country found themselves having to learn to live with captives of a nation with which they were at war. In a work that is both theoretically informed and exhaustively researched, Morieux offers fresh insight into the consequences of war for European society.

scholarly journals Travelling in New Formes: Reissued and Reprinted Travel Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Day
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Main Body ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Title Pages ◽  
The Way

Despite increased recognition of the importance of the material nature of the book to our understanding of the creation of meanings, there has been relatively little focus on the travel literature of the eighteenth century. The market was enormous and a significant part of it comprised reissued and reprinted works. This article looks at the way books that returned to the market were given new contexts and created new meanings without changing the language of the main body of the text. By careful consideration of paratextual features such as title-pages, dedicatory epistles, marginalia and running titles and by considering such issues as the gathering of texts into collections, this article demonstrates the financial, political and ideological motives behind the reissue and reprinting of books. It shows how, through them, texts were 'reformed' in many different ways and suggests that reissues and reprints created, in effect, new books.

scholarly journals What guns meant in eighteenth-century Britain

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Priya Satia
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
British Society ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ethical Systems ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article briefly summarizes the place of guns in British society and culture in the long eighteenth century. My approach is that of a historical anthropologist, examining the meaning of guns from the way they were used and depicted. I examine the way guns were used and understood in civilian and military realms, especially their meaning and role in the expansion of the British Empire. Finally, the essay discusses whether and how this history should influence our understanding of the Second Amendment, which was written in the eighteenth century. It concludes that history substantiates both sides of the current debate about gun use in America and that we must therefore turn to other ethical systems of judgment to resolve that debate.

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