The Digital Encyclopedia of British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century

Search by category

People

Practices

Objects

Concepts

Places

The Project

An innovative tool and an interdisciplinary approach

An open-access digital encyclopedia with a multi-modal search engine
An international and interdisciplinary project led by the GIS Sociabilités / Sociability since 2017
An EU-funded project (Horizon 2020-MSCA-RISE) since 2019, promoting staff exchange and intersectoral collaborations
A digital humanities project managed by an experienced editorial team
Encyclopedia entries written in English or French by eighteenth-century scholars in various fields (history, art history, literature, philosophy, material culture, linguistics ...) and reviewed by a dedicated committee
A complementary anthology of texts related to various aspects of sociability and connected to the entries

Find out more

Bringing academic research on eighteenth-century sociability to a wider audience

Explore the wide range of topics related to British Sociability from 1650 to 1850 and learn about the circulation of models of sociability that shaped European and colonial societies.
Discover the collaborative work between academic researchers on primary source material in their respective fields of expertise
Browse through 200 entries enriched with illustrations, hyperlinks, footnotes and further reading suggestions
Search by keywords, by alphabetical order or by categories (People, Places, Practices, Concepts, Objects) and sub-categories
Navigate easily through a dynamic and updatable resource
Share content with online media and social networks

Latest entries

Practices

Shopping

SCHMID Susanne

Eighteenth-century retail underwent major developments: growing numbers of shops with increasing specialization and a wider range of goods available to individuals, who were keen to buy and consume British products as well as goods from outside Europe such as textiles and china.

Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi

HANSEN Mascha

Often considered a contradictory character herself, Hester Thrale Piozzi, now best remembered as a Bluestocking hostess and biographer of Samuel Johnson, embodies some of the contradictions of eighteenth-century sociable lives.

People

Jane Austen

DILLE Catherine

As a novelist of manners and an acute observer of human interactions, Jane Austen analysed the implications of late Georgian and Regency sociability with regard to gender and social rank. Critiquing earlier notions of polite sociability, her fictions recognise new sites of provincial recreation and explore the intersection between sociability and courtship while also probing sociability’s power to unify communities.

Anthology

As part of its H2020 programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (MSCA-RISE-2018)), the European Commission has granted significant financial support to DIGITENS, the flagship project of the Scientific Interest Grouping (GIS) “Sociabilités/Sociability”.