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… Commons, 1772. Abstract The English literature of the long eighteenth century offers abundant portraits of female friendship as a frequent form of sociability among women – sometimes sentimentalised as true spiritual companionship … pure and innocent souls, sometimes demonised as a devious façade for unnatural sexual desire. As opposed to men’s friendships, which centred on socialising in the public sphere, forms of attachment among women were associated with the … lives of the Ladies of Llangollen, or literary explorations of lesbian desire, fictional portraits of female friendship in the long eighteenth century seem to have provided women with the intellectual stimulus, the emotional …

… Prince Richard Grenville Nugent Chandos Temple (Buckingham: J. Seeley, 1817) Image Dr Richard Murray, ‘The Temple of Friendship, Stowe’, Wikimedia Commons, (CC BY-SA 2.0), 2008. Abstract This entry explores the diverse uses of the language and concept of friendship in eighteenth-century 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 …

… Image ‘The Petticoat Duellists [Two ladies duelling with pistols]’, Wellcome Collection, 568670i, 1792. Abstract Friendship held an important place in the long eighteenth century. But one of the major challenges of everyday life was … or treatises explicitly dealt with the subject of enmity, but it was always a central feature of the literature on friendship from this period, which contained abundant warnings about the perils of false friendship. The deepest enmities resulted from the closest friendships. Yet the candour and honesty of enemies had …

… of human character and social sympathy . People > Art and Literature Keywords Affection Benevolence Conversation Family Friendship Imagination Patriotism Science Sympathy Coleridge’s childhood: parental love and education The youngest in a … after. For the poet, this early uprooting from his family environment accounted for his later ‘[c]hasing chance-started friendships’: 1 . Richard Holmes, Coleridge : Early Visions, 1772-1804 (New-York: Harper Perennial, 2005), p. 18. 2 . E. … Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fix’d Its first domestic loves; and hence through life Chasing chance-started friendships.’ 3 3 . S.T. Coleridge, ‘To the Rev. George Coleridge’, The Complete Poetical Works. Vol. 1, ed. Ernest …

… on fashionable London society. People > Art and Literature Keywords Assemblies Bluestockings Conversation Correspondence Friendship Women The fourth child of nine surviving siblings, Elizabeth Robinson grew up in a debate-loving, literary … and occasionally ‘bilious’) and spent part of almost every year at Tunbridge Wells taking the waters. There, where friendships could be begun – and dropped – more easily than in London, she met many of the literary men and women who … (San Marino: Huntington Library, 2003), p. 175-192, p.178. 3 . Sylvia Harcstack Myers, The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 250. 4 . Gary …

… gatherings and through her literary works. People > Art and Literature People > Travel Keywords Bluestockings Commerce Friendship Italy Literature Politics Born into a Welsh family proud of its ancestry, Hester Lynch Salusbury spent most of … such a splash. Frances, an inveterate diarist, would chronicle many of the debates at Streatham, and provided a female friendship that filled a gap in Hester Thrale’s so far male-dominated life. 6  Hester later added Helen Maria Williams … visitors and writers such as Samuel Rogers as well as the novelists Harriet and Sophia Lee. She formed a lifelong friendship with the great actress, Sarah Siddons, and even tried her hand at playwriting but neither of her attempts ever …