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Royal Academy of Arts [ Institutions ]

… Abstract The Royal Academy of Arts, founded in 1768, was an example of restricted professional and cultural sociability. The statutes limited the number of members and imposed rules of good behaviour to ensure that politeness … who, with the exception of the lower classes, excluded by an entrance fee, could share in the experience of visual sociability. At the end of the century, because of its inner conflicts, the Academy was criticized for its anti-sociability. Places > Institutions Keywords Artistic sociability Anti-sociability Visual sociability Dining Exhibition …

Jane Austen [ Art and Literature ]

… manners and an acute observer of human interactions, Jane Austen analysed the implications of late Georgian and Regency sociability with regard to gender and social rank. Critiquing earlier notions of polite sociability, her fictions recognise new sites of provincial recreation and explore the intersection between sociability and courtship while also probing sociability’s power to unify communities. Finally, Austen’s legacy has …

Vauxhall [ Sports & Leisure ]

… and spatial organization allowed for various types of social interaction, which encouraged different types of sociability. With cultural entertainments such as concerts and exhibitions of paintings, it made polite pleasures a part of sociability. The activities it offered ranged from collective entertainment, such as a music kiosk to be heard by … a small group of their own social circle.   Places > Sports & Leisure Keywords Vauxhall Pleasure gardens visuality Sociability Entertainement Vauxhall pleasure garden was one of the public outdoor places of sociability: the ‘ pleasure …

Electoral sociability [ Politics & Society ]

… Abstract Parliamentary elections were the sites of both polite sociability and impolite, divisive, abusive and highly unsociable behaviour. As moments of intense social interaction between parties, candidates and electors, elections could be significant sites of sociability and even festivity, in person and in print; but they could also generate unsociability in the form of drunkenness, hostility, bitter partisanship and even violence that many commentators saw as …

Pierre-Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos [ Art and Literature / Association ]

… Abstract Laclos embodied all forms of eighteenth-century sociability. He was a Freemason and regular visitor to the clubs and salons of the revolutionary period. Finding his … on Richardson’s Clarissa , was his ‘unique book’. More radical than its English model, it called into question a whole sociability that had descended into libertinism. The work simultaneously marked the pinnacle and dissolution of the … novel, the symbol of sociable exchange. People > Art and Literature People > Association Keywords Revolutionary sociability libertinism Epistolary novel Richardson Social reform Born on 18 October 1741 in Amiens to a recently …

Samuel Richardson [ Art and Literature ]

… created a society of writers and readers based on esteem, admiration and friendship, thereby promoting a special kind of sociability, relying on the qualities of the heart and mind. People > Art and Literature Keywords Samuel Richardson Writing and reading practices Letter Epistolary sociability Friendship Sentiment Heart and mind Although Samuel Richardson was a reserved, taciturn man who was ill at … – notes and gestures – to direct communication through spoken words, his writing activity enabled him to promote sociability through the creation of a society of writers and readers. For one thing, in his Familiar Letters 1 , he gave …