Travel

Le renforcement de la puissance militaire et financière de l’Angleterre et du Royaume-Uni place la métropole londonienne au cœur des relations diplomatiques européennes. Par conséquent, la sociabilité des ambassadeurs et consuls auprès des monarques et du Parlement de Westminster s’est reconfigurée en profondeur.

Dositej Obradović (1739/41-1811), Serbia’s foremost enlightener, was able to carry out reforms thanks to his circle of friends and the ties he established among Serbs were a direct consequence of his stay in London.

Casanova’s sociability was the result of his personality, and his life, most of which – at least the part recounted – was spent as a wanderer throughout Europe, an adventurer seeking fortune. Casanova made his living by such varied means as organizing a royal lottery, gambling, and at times acting as a confidence man.

‘In every country it is social pleasure that sheds the most delicious flowers which grow on the path of life’ (H.M. Williams, Letters, 1790, 140 ). This British author, who settled in Paris in 1792, contributed greatly to the circulation of ideas between France and England through her intellectual and political circles as well as through her publications. She was a tireless chronicler of social practices and historical events from the Revolution to the Restoration.

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.