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… Image Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), 1760, National Portrait Gallery, London. Abstract While Laurence Sterne was not one of the most prolific novelists of the eighteenth century, he was … the title page of the last three instalments. 5 . See Jack Lynch, Deception and Detection in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Routledge, 2016). In a letter, Sterne expressed the appeal which celebrity exerted upon him: ‘I wrote not to be fed , but to be famous ’. 6  In 1760, he spent a few months in London, promoting his book, and being admitted in all the fashionable social circles, meeting the earl of Chesterfield or …

… eligible woman might trust herself in a man’s hands? 1 . Catherine Hutton, The Miser Married, a Novel in Three Volumes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1813), vol. II, p. 170. The literature on British sociability over the long … additional stolen moment of touch. 2 . For example, Soile Ylivuori, Women and Politeness in Eighteenth Century England (London: Routledge, 2018) 3 . Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (London: Allen Lane, 2012), p. 354. In 1715-16, when he was 24, the aspiring lawyer, later High Court Judge, Dudley Ryder …

… Image Henry Rumsey Forster, The Pocket Peerage of Great Britain and Ireland (London: David Bogue, 1852). Abstract In the eighteenth century, portable directories were key instruments of sociability … reference books, which provided a snapshot of their ancestors, alliances and children. Whether it be during the London Season or in the provincial daily life, sociability was strongly shaped by the knowledge of family links and … their wealth or to maintain their pre-eminence, they had to circulate in the larger public spheres in the provinces, in London and in the colonies. Whether old or new, landed families required portable gateways to navigate and to be seen in …

… Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M_y W_y M_e: Written, during her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, vol. 1 (London: B. Dodd, 1776), p. vii. 2 . Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters (London: Virago Press, 1994), p. 58. Sociable values (‘the politeness of a court’, ‘the gentleness of a lady’) are also … 1793), p. 67. 4 . Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), p. 49. Since the 1990s, scholarship on women’s travel writing has clearly …

… for sociable encounters. 3 2 . Harold A. Innis, The Bias of Communication, intr. Alexander J. Watson (Toronto Buffalo London: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. 142. 3 . Sebastian Domsch and Mascha Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in … of modern public opinion see, for instance, Elizabeth Eger and Lucy Peltz, Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings (London: Yale University Press, 2008); Amanda Vickery (ed.), Women, Privilege and Power: British Politics, 1750 to the … Connection (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2019), p. 237-250. 7 . Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (London: Vintage Classics, 2017), p. 18. The Press became a fundamental social medium. Thus, authoritative opinions might …

… Image Thomas Rowlandson, ‘Miseries of London’, Wikimedia Commons, 1807. Abstract In a world of pedestrians streets and roads formed the most demotic of social … commentators were just as fascinated by the sociability of the street, and especially with the streets of London. These alfresco demotic spaces witnessed innumerable cross-class and cross-gender encounters that sit awkwardly at … encounters in the street did not escape eighteenth-century commentators. From Marcellus Laroon's Cryes of the City of London drawne after the Life 1678), to Defoe ’s Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack (1721) a new fascination with streets and …