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The Development of the English Board Game, 1770 – 1850
Posted on February 4, 2013 | No CommentsIt is known from surviving records, paintings and artifacts that games of the period (and today) are played in a similar way to those of ancient civilisations in the near and far east. There are only a few basic methods of playing games and over the past 250 years many thousands of variations have been created. The basic methods of play come down to four types – race games, strategy games, table games and card games. -
More Than Just Kidd’s Play
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsTom Wareham examines the role played by a legendary yet ill-fated pirate in the consolidation of England’s early trading empire. -
The Novel-Reading Panic in 18th-Century in England: An Outline of an Early Moral Media Panic
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsThe epistemology behind this research follows from my understanding of a novel not as a literary genre, but rather as a ‘cultural form’ in Raymond Williams’ cul- tural-materialist sense (Williams, 1997), according to which cultural production (in order to be properly understood) can be studied only in relation to its specific societal and historical frameworks. -
‘Selling Consumption’: An Examination of Eighteenth-Century English Trade Cards
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsAdditionally, the cards’ aesthetic enticed consumers by using themes, images and a language that would have been associated with innovation, originality and luxury. -
Undermining Apprenticeship: City, Law and Growth in early modern London
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper describes a very different, and entirely neglected, side of apprenticeship in London: the city’s system of contract dissolution. I suggest easy dissolution played a vital role in sustaining apprenticeship in London, and was apparently echoed in a weaker form elsewhere in England. -
The London Vagrancy Crisis of the 1780s
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsIn part, this can be seen as simply one more of a broad series of changes in the administration of crime. A whole raft of old and new punishments were being used in new ways, largely as a result of the end of transportation to North America – that had formed so prominent an aspect of penal policy prior to 1776. -
Space, place, and popular politics in northern England, 1789-1848
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsThese studies underline the crucial role of space and place in this volatile and revolutionary period. They argue that space is socially constructed, which in itself helps to shape behaviour of those who inhabit or imagine the space. -
The Napier papers
Posted on October 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe Hon. George Napier married en secondes noces Lady Sarah Bunbury, daughter of Charles, 2nd Duke of Richmond, and divorced wife of Sir Thomas Bunbury: she was the famous beauty to whom George III had once proposed. -
English Xenophobia in the 18th Century: the Case of Lord Bute
Posted on October 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe covert manipulator, in other words, of the political strings chiefly responsible for the difficulties which marked the opening years of George III’s reign. -
The Case for the Union 1707
Posted on October 19, 2012 | No CommentsAndrew Fletcher’s First Discourse Concerning the Affairs of Scotland, published in 1698, makes the case for an independent Scotland, and also initiates the debate on Union, on whether Scotland should go it alone or join England. Pamphlets on both sides soon appeared in large numbers. -
For Something More Than King and Country: The Persistence of the Mercenary Tradition in Seventeenth Century Scottish Military History
Posted on October 15, 2012 | No CommentsWhy was it that the Highlanders came into the military service of a regime that had previously treated their society as a pariah? -
The Glasgow Royal Infirmary: Aspects of Illness and Health Care in the Victorian City
Posted on October 15, 2012 | No CommentsSince the opening of the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow’s growth had been dramatic. In 1791 the population of the city and its suburbs numbered 66,000; a century later it had swollen to three quarters of a million. During this time the Royal endeavoured to treat diseases and mend bodies of a mushrooming populace: in-house medical and surgical wards were extended; vaccination services commenced in 1857. -
Dissecting the Living: Vivisection in Early Modern England
Posted on October 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe term ‘vivisection’, which refers to the act of dissecting a live animal or human being, was coined in 1709. Yet, it celebrated a long tradition reaching back thousands of years. One of the earliest recorded accounts dates from 500 B.C., when Alcmaeon of Croton severed the optic nerves of live animals in order to understand how it affected their vision. -
George and Maria: A Reinterpretation of King George IV and the Queen Caroline Affair
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsHowever, the majority of recent non-biographical scholarship relating to the reign of George IV focuses primarily on the Queen Caroline Affair, which painted an unflattering picture of George as a weak, corrupt, immoral cuckold. Thus, it is only through this narrow focus that George has been judged as a husband and man. Somewhere between the lovelorn and the heartless depictions lies reality. During my quest to reconcile these two vastly different perceptions, I discovered that, despite negative modern portrayals ofthe Queen Caroline Affair by feminist scholars, my initial romantic conception of George was not false. -
The 1738–41 Harvest Crisis in Scotland
Posted on October 5, 2012 | No CommentsTo demonstrate this, the harvest and mortality crisis or macroeconomic depression of 1738–41, a hitherto largely unexplored event in Scotland’s eighteenth-century economic history, has been chosen. -
Literary servants’ vanishing act in the eighteenth century
Posted on September 19, 2012 | No CommentsWhere are the servants in Jane Austen's novels? What causes servants to vanish from the literary landscape between the publication of Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740), or Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1741) and Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811). -
“Butcher-like and hatefull”: Domestic Medicine and Resistance to Surgery in Early Modern England
Posted on September 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe earl's story points us towards an unexpected set of connections and contests between surgery and domestic medicine. Many historians have treated domestic medicine as a “first port of call” for the “medically promiscuous” early modern patient, the lowest level of “the hierarchy of resort -
Jane Austen and the History of England
Posted on September 4, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough it is suggested frequently that Jane Austen embraced a particular understanding of English history, historians have only just begun analyzing exactly what this understanding of history might have been, or how her particular understanding of English history shaped her oeuvre. -
“Putting to Hazard a Certainty”: Lotteries and the Romance of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century England
Posted on September 1, 2012 | No CommentsI hope to enrich our understanding of the early decades of the Financial Revolution by examining a financial instrument that has received much less attention, at least from literary scholars with interests in financial and economic history: the lottery. I focus on the lottery to show the deep foundations of the Financial Revolution in gambling. -
Anne Askew and Margaret Fell: Religious Women in Prison And Technologies of the Self
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsBoth Anne Askew (1521-1546) and Margaret Fell (1614-1702) were imprisoned and wrote significant writings in jail. In prison Askew wrote The First Examination (1546) and The Latter Examination (1547); Fell wrote Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures (1666). The two Protestants’ imprisonment indicates not only their struggle for freedom of their Protestant belief but also the government’s arbitrary exercise of institutional power over non-conforming women. -
Functional Goods and Fancies: The Production and Consumption of Consumer Goods in Northumberland, Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham c. 1680-1780
Posted on August 22, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis explores the place of consumer goods in the culturally changing environment of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. It specifically focuses on the production and consumption of consumer goods in Northumberland, Newcastle and Durham between c. 1680 to 1780. -
The justice of the peace and county government in the East Riding of Yorkshire, 1782-1836
Posted on August 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe Riding was dominated by its geology and geography. It was predominantly agricultural with few major settlements and very little industrial development. -
‘Wanton and torturing punishments’ : patterns of discipline and punishment in the Royal Navy, 1783-1815
Posted on August 20, 2012 | No CommentsThe British Navy of the time of the Napoleonic Wars acquired a fearsome reputation, not only for its success but also, in the eyes of many historians, for the cruelty with which it recruited and treated its men. It is not simply that the forms of punishment, including hanging, flogging and gagging were, to the modern eye, barbaric and unacceptable. -
The reform of punishment and the criminal justice system in England and Wales from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century
Posted on August 20, 2012 | No CommentsDuring the late seventeenth-century and throughout the eighteenth-century crime provided one of the principal subjects for popular literature. -
Melancholy and the Idle Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe thesis considers Johnson‘s preoccupation with idleness as a symptom of his melancholy, a notion that has received little critical attention. Shenstone‘s experience is used to illustrate the depressing effect that a retired lifestyle could have on the individual. -
Good Reads for the Dog Days of Summer
Posted on August 18, 2012 | No CommentsSee summer off with these fun reads! -
Dealer in Magic: James Cox’s Jewelry Museum and the Economics of Luxurious Spectacle in Late-Eighteenth-Century London
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsI suggest that the museum Cox established in the 1770s illuminates an eighteenth- century arts industry located in London, the nature of which needs to be better understood if we are adequately to understand the concept of an alliance between heritage and commerce for the benefit of the nation in which much current economic and cultural discourse is grounded. -
Robert Harley and the Myth of the Golden Thread: Family Piety,Journalism and the History of the Assassination Attempt of 8 March 1711
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsOn 8 March 1711, a possible French double agent, the marquis de Guiscard, on his own initiative bearing a grudge against both Robert Harley and Henry St John, attempted to assassinate Harley, the chancellor of the exchequer (later lord treasurer and earl of Oxford) and head of the new tory ministry established the previous year, by stabbing him with a penknife. -
Political Verse in Late Georgian Britain: Poems Referring to William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806)
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsThough Pitt was remarkable for the length of his tenure of office and for his youth when first appointed – he became Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four and only Sir Robert Walpole held office for a longer period – it is not our intention to suggest that he was in any way a unique phenomenon in the history of political versifying. -
‘The art of dancing, demonstrated by characters and figures’: French and English sources for court and theatre dance, 1700-1750
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsIn the early seventeenth century, during the reigns of James I and Charles I, England developed its own court entertainment in the masque - many of them devised by the dramatist and poet Ben Jonson in collaboration with the architect and designer Inigo Jones. -
England and the Machinery of Reason 1780 to 1830
Posted on July 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe increasingly sturdy optimism that nature could be understood and controlled both influenced and was equally strengthened by, the growing development of manufactures and attempts to understand labour productivity during this period. -
“I am her majesty’s subject”: Prince George of Denmark and the transformation of the English male consort
Posted on July 18, 2012 | No CommentsAmid the historical attention paid to the Revolution of 1688/89 and the Act of Settlement of 1701, an explanation for the constitutional demise of the male consort has never emerged. -
Sporting Days in Eighteenth Century England
Posted on July 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe typical view of the sports historian has not disturbed this accepted analysis of the role of play in eighteenth century life. The argument goes that “modern sport” was born of the industrial revolution...While this account has some proximate truth, it is too precise, sweeping and simple. -
The Cultural and Ideological Significance of Representations of Boudica During the Reigns of Elizabeth I and James I
Posted on June 3, 2012 | No CommentsFascinated by the British myth of Boudica I began my research into her life and times with the ambition of writing a story. Curious to know what others before me had produced in this field I started to look at representations of Boudica by other historical novelists. I also wanted to understand how the historical Boudica of 60 AD had been transfigured over the years into the icon we have of her today. -
Criminal trial procedure in eighteenth-century England: the impact of lawyers
Posted on June 3, 2012 | No CommentsBut how precisely did this happen? Langbein’s astute detective work has now revealed that this important shift in courtroom practice followed hard on the heels of a series of scandals by which innocent defendants were prosecuted on the initiative of unscrupulous thief-takers and ‘Newgate solicitors’ who invented evidence and coached witnesses with the aim of profiting from rewards for convictions. -
King George III and porphyria: an elemental hypothesis and investigation
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsKing George III (1738–1820), who was monarch from 1760 until his death, was one of the longest serving British sovereigns. During his reign, Britain achieved oceanic mastery, the defeat of Napoleonic France, and expansion of its empire to a level similar to a superpower. Despite these achievements, his reign is best remembered for the humiliating loss of the American colonies and his well-documented bouts of madness. -
The blindness, deafness and madness of King George III: psychiatric interactions
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1966–69 Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, mother and son psychiatrists and historians, claimed on the basis of selective reading and interpretation of the medical and contemporary accounts of King George III’s illnesses that he suffered from acute intermittent porphyria. -
Ledger reveals secrets of Victorian espionage
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsAn Article detailing evidence of Victorian espionage. Ledger reveals secrets of Victorian espionage Cloak of secrecy is torn from the spy world: Boxes of documents released at the Public Record Office chart the activities of British intelligence and its network of agents from a century ago. -
Patriotic women: Shakespearean heroines of the 1720s
Posted on May 19, 2012 | No CommentsEarly 18th-century adaptations of Shakespeare can arguably be regarded as reconstructions of the plays for the ‘modern’ stage. Commentators such as Jean Marsden have convincingly suggested that post-1660 drama turns its attention to love, family and marriage, all subjects befitting the presence of women... -
An ordinary metropolis: the evolution of criminal justice in London, 1750-1830
Posted on April 19, 2012 | No CommentsHistorians often view the creation of the police as separate from legal and penal reform. The three are intricately related. Reformers' and pamphleteers' messages for reform joined law reform to a general plea for modernity. -
Playing at Command: Midshipmen and Quarterdeck Boys in the Royal Navy, 1793-1815
Posted on April 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe increasing social status of young gentlemen in the Royal Navy of the Great Wars and the processes that maintained their authority reflected wider social and cultural trends - developments that confirmed the view of Georgian England as an ancien regime. -
From obligation to agreement: concepts of servitude in early modern England
Posted on April 10, 2012 | No CommentsUntil quite recently, servants played a central role in European family life...Early Modern England was no exception, for nearly every household participated in the institution of servitude. -
Conflict, consensus and charity: politics and the provincial voluntary hospitals in the eighteenth century
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsJust as each individual infirmary linked county and town, so collectively the provincial voluntary hospitals displayed both national and local features. On the one hand, they were linked in a national movement. -
The taming of the duel: masculinity, honour and ritual violence in London, 1660–1800
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe duel had a long history, but it was a malleable custom, and has been variously described as fundamentally feudal, early modern, and modern."Although traceable back to medieval tournaments, feuds, and judicial combat, the single combat to resolve questions of honour developed in the sixteenth century in several European countries, arriving in England in the 1570s. -
To the Ends of the Earth: A Study of the Explorative Discourse Promoting British Expansionism in Canada
Posted on February 19, 2012 | No CommentsBetween the second half of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century, the British conception of the western Canadian wilderness remained remarkably consistent. The popular British image of western Canada, persisting into the 1830s, was of a wasteland fit only for the fur trade. -
Writing the Self? Love and the Letter in England, c. 1660–c. 1760
Posted on February 15, 2012 | No CommentsBefore we examine the socio-cultural meanings of Ursula’s letters, and what they tell us about emotional experience and expression in long eighteenth-century England, we need to consider their circumstances of production. -
The boot and shoe trades in London and Paris in the long eighteenth century
Posted on December 13, 2011 | No CommentsVery different appears to be the Parisian case, where provincial producers flourished only after the mechanisation of the sector. By the 1850s mechanisation meant the beginning of a new phase in the trade. -
The Royal dockyards in England at the time of the American War of Independence
Posted on December 13, 2011 | No CommentsThe system was at fault. Individuals, such as Lord Sandwich and Charles Middleton, worked hard to keep it going, while trying at the same time to improve it. Fortunately, defeat in the war encouraged the start of this reform in the 1780's. -
The contexts and contours of British economic literature, 1660-1760
Posted on December 12, 2011 | No CommentsIn the century after the Restoration of Charles II there was a remarkable outpouring of thinking about economic issues in Britain, of exploring the ways and means to prosperity and plenty. -
The First Christmas Tree
Posted on December 11, 2011 | No CommentsAlison Barnes sets the record straight on who was really responsible for introducing this popular custom to Britain.