WILLIAMSON Gillian

Doctor of philosophy and independent scholar
Research expertise

Eighteenth-century social history; newspaper culture and popular politics in mid-eighteenth century Westminster.

Contributions

Concepts Practices

Gentleman

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.