Reading & Writing

Republic of Letters

Republic of Letters

EDMONDSON Chloe
The Republic of Letters was an abstract intellectual community in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century that was comprised of numerous networks throughout Europe and the Americas. Correspondence was the defining feature of its existence, enabling the dissemination of ideas, new literary and philosophical manuscripts, and political news and pamphlets.
Maria Edgeworth

White lies, polite lies

HANSEN Mascha
‘I wish that word fib was banished from the English language, and white lie drummed out after it,’ exclaims Miss Clarendon, a scrupulously honest character in Maria Edgeworth’s Helen (1811). Then as now, the prevalent moral view was that lying was a pernicious form of social deception.
Women's travel writing

Women's travel writing

PAGE-JONES Kimberley

This entry deals with female travel narratives to the Continent, with a focus on those written during the revolutionary decade (1789-1800). It aims to show how sociability – sociable practices, culture, values – was a key topic for understanding the Continental other (its character, manners and mores) but also a rhetorical mode of writing one’s self in relation to the other.