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Debating societies [ Clubs & Societies / Associational culture ]

… societies became well-established institutions in London and provincial cities, catering for the taste for public debate among the lower and middling sorts. Topics could be frivolous, but when societies debated politics, religion, and the economy they were felt to voice threateningly radical opinions. When the reaction against the French Revolution hardened, public political debate became impossible and societies were outlawed. Despite those chequered fortunes they served as places for …

Friendship [ Social interaction / Character / Feelings and Emotions ]

… Britain. Though obviously central to sociable thought and practice, friendship was also caught up in philosophical debates about the instrumentality of feeling and the nature of social obligation. These debates in turn extended to the political arena, in which the invocation of friendship could be suspect or ironic. … the ulterior motives of Cobham’s choices remind us of the potential for friendship to be enlisted within political debate, used as a tool to reinforce alliances or impose ideological conformity. Among the figures represented in the …

English theatre in Enlightenment France [ Literary & Artistic genres ]

… and their passions. Sociability thus operated on two levels—on stage, and in the audience. It also fuelled the debate on Franco-British relations. Concepts > Literary & Artistic genres Keywords Friendship Anglomania comedy drama … that ‘the French only truly discovered British theatre in the eighteenth century,’ 1   but it immediately gave rise to debates surrounding theatre, culture, and morality. Sociability was a central issue in the debate. The discovery was part of a general wave of Anglomania which ‘manifested more readily in literature than in other …

Coffeehouses [ Institutions / Food & Drink venues ]

… brought people together for the ostensible purpose of drinking coffee, but they also encouraged discussion and often debate over matters of common interest. News gathering, news reading and news sharing were as integral to coffeehouse … brought people together for the ostensible purpose of drinking coffee, but they also encouraged discussion and often debate over matters of common interest. News gathering, news reading and news sharing were as integral to coffeehouse … it figures less prominently in the social discourse of the later eighteenth century. The gradual diminishment of debates about coffeehouse sociability has led some commentators to believe that coffeehouses were ultimately replaced by …

Luxury [ Taste & Manners ]

… Hume Porcelain Shopping Tea-table Consumerism Women The rise of consumer goods and consumerism made luxury a much-debated topic throughout the eighteenth century. By its very nature, luxury is always defined in relation to an audience … (china) and dances (dress), likewise in public leisure spaces. 3   Eighteenth-century Britain saw an ongoing luxury debate, which occurred during a period when consumerism and the availability of consumer goods were rapidly growing. 1 . … the Dutch Golden Age in Theory and Practice’, in Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (ed.) Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 41. 3 . Maxine Berg, Luxury and …