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Street sociability [ Cities ]

… The streets demanded new rules of behaviour, new ‘rules of the road’. By reference to the practice of everyday life, the evolution of literary representations of street life, and the development of new forms of regulation, this … in a dozen other picaresque novels – form, plot and tension are provided by ever more varied social encounters on both urban streets and country roads. 6 Building on the format of Cervantes’ Don Quixote , in the works of Fielding, Smollett … Pageant: A Literary Sourcebook on London Street-Life, 1700-1914 (London: Routledge, 1998). It was not merely that the urban streetscape was a location of imaginative journeying. In law, governance and regulation, and in non-fiction …

Horseracing [ Games & Sports ]

… Racing, Britain’s first proto-modern, widely-followed national sport, opens a window into wider sociability and cultural life. The annual race week created an important urban social space, involving both public and private sociability, attracting racehorse owners and gamblers; men and … balls, eating and drinking, to cock fighting or pugilism.   Practices > Games & Sports Keywords sports culture status Urban life Women Horse racing had a prominent place amongst the new forms of human sociability and fields of practice …

Politeness [ Taste & Manners / Education ]

… expression of human egoism. In either case, the attractiveness of politeness grew out of contemporary developments in urban living, class aspiration, print culture and consumption patterns. Concepts > Taste & Manners Practices > Education Keywords Social relations Civility Urban life Consumption Politeness was a key word in eighteenth-century Britain, and its meanings were actualized in many areas …

Coffeehouses [ Institutions / Food & Drink venues ]

… played an important role both as real spaces for social interaction and as virtual places in which normative ideals of urban and polite sociability were imagined. Coffeehouses were centres of sociability because they brought people together … played an important role both as real spaces for social interaction and as virtual places in which normative ideals of urban and polite sociability were imagined. The first coffeehouses were established in England in the 1650s, possibly in … established the Rainbow Coffeehouse in competition with Rosee and soon thereafter many other coffeehouses began to proliferate. By 1663, there were eighty-two coffeehouses in the City of London and likely many more in the greater …

Betting book [ Sports & Gaming accessories ]

… its roots in the fashion for speculation that emerged at the end of the seventeenth century with the development of life insurance. ‘Life insurance was largely an urban phenomenon’ 2  and the growth of the London insurance market was associated with the expansion of English foreign … n° 15 (Thursday May 9, 1754) 2 Geoffrey Clark, ‘Life insurance in the society and culture of London, 1700-75’, Urban History, (vol. 24, no. 1, May 1997), p. 25. 3 The South Sea Bubble corresponds to the speculative fever on the …

Hannah More (and philanthropic sociability) [ Religion & Philanthropy / Politics & Society / Religious Belief ]

… Abstract Hannah More, a woman of letters, was a Christian activist and philanthropist. Her sociable life in Britain’s major social centers, London and Bath, enabled her to use her closeness to the bluestocking circle and … of whom she quickly became a protégée . It is undoubtedly her status as a playwright that enabled her to strike a lifelong friendship with David Garrick and his wife Eva and to lionize Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole. What has been … of Mrs Hannah More (London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1834), 2nd edition, vol.I, p. 69. Yet, despite the benefits of urban literary sociability, More was never blinded by the dazzling lights of the city. Her visits to London grew less …