Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain, 1770-1840

by Gillian Russell (Editor), Clara Tuite (Editor)

Overview

Challenging the assumptions which underlie an understanding of the "Romantics" as solitary and anti-sociable, this volume introduces sociability to the field of Romantic literary and cultural studies. The volume focuses in particular on sociability in British radical culture of the 1790s as it moved away from eighteenth-century ideas of a masculine "public sphere", and on the gendered nature of sociability. In a range of essays the volume transforms our understanding of Romanticism by exploring the social networks of Romantic figures including Barbauld, Burney, Coleridge, Godwin, Hazlitt, Priestley, Thelwall and Wollstonecraft.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521770682
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/02/2002
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Gillian Russell is Senior Lecturer in English at the Australian National University. She is author of The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics and Society, 1793–1815 (1995) and an associate editor of The Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776–1832 ed. Iain McCalman (1999). Her articles have appeared in Eighteenth-Century Life, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Eighteenth-Century Studies and The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation.

Clara Tuite is Lecturer in English at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Romantic Austen (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and an associate editor of The Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776–1832 ed. Iain McCalman (1999).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. Introducing Romantic sociability Gillian Russell and Clara Tuite; 2. Sociability and the international republican conversation Margaret C. Jacob; 3. 'Equality and no king': sociability and sedition; the case of John Frost James Epstein; 4. Amiable and radical sociability: Anna Barbauld's 'free familiar conversation' Anne Janowitz; 5. Firebrands, letters and flowers: Mrs. Barbauld and the Priestleys Deirdre Coleman; 6. 'Reciprocal expressions of kindness': Robert Merry, the Della Cruscans, and the limits of Romantic sociability Jon Mee; 7. Spouters of washerwomen: the sociability of Romantic lecturing Gillian Russell; 8. Hazlitt and the sociability of theatre Julie A. Carlson; 9. 'Obliged to make this sort of deposit of our minds': William Godwin and the sociable contract of writing Judith Barbour; 10. The Byronic woman: Anne Lister's style, sociability and sexuality Clara Tuite; 11. Counter publics: shopping and women's sociability Deidre Shauna Lynch; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Russell and Tuite challenge the assumption that the Romantic writers were solitary and unsociable by asking contributors to introduce the subject of sociability into the field of Romanticism.... Readers with an interest in the 18th century and the Romantic period will want to read this book." Choice

From the Publisher