The Digital Encyclopedia of British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century

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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

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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
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Latest entries

Places

Spas

VASSET Sophie

Spa towns encompass various sizes and categories in eighteenth-century Britain. The role of health and medicine pervades social interactions in spa towns which abounded in urban spaces dedicated to sociability: the pump-room, the assembly rooms, the walks villas and salons.

Gentleman

WILLIAMSON Gillian

Gentlemanliness was a contested quality in eighteenth-century Britain. During the century, the term broadened away from men of lineage to encompass the rising middling sort. One criterion used to define these ‘new’ gentlemen’ was sociability, but this was a sociability that now had to conform to other qualities making the new gentlemen: industriousness, sincerity, honesty, benevolence. Lord Chesterfield's instructions to his son on the art of pleasing were now regarded as superficial, corrupting. This entry considers this shift in gentlemanly sociability which intersects with many other entries in DIGIT.EN.S.

Concepts Practices

People

John Keats

ELPRIN Jeremy

When the second-generation Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) – best known today for his ‘Great Odes’ and for coining the term ‘Negative Capability’ – died in Rome, at the age of 25, he may have been penniless, but he was certainly not friendless. Although his work received little public recognition during his lifetime, his close circle of friends in England strove to defend his genius and preserve his memory for posterity. Friendship was always central to Keats’s life; his poetry and letters attest to a vitally social existence, and to the lasting influence of London literary coteries on his development as a poet and thinker.

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”.