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Laughter [ Communication ]

… the anxieties and aspirations inherent in sociability quite like laughter. Practices > Communication Keywords Laughter humour Wit Taste Politeness impoliteness Manners civil society In May 1787, author-turned cleric Thomas Monro devoted an … trans. Anon. (London: J. Newbery and W. Nicoll, 1764), p. 14. In eighteenth-century intellectual circles, however, good humour and laughter were not simply a matter of superficial good manners; they were elevated as an essential prop to civil society. The third earl of Shaftesbury’s essay,  Sensus Communis, or an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour , was among the most prominent texts to make the case. For Shaftesbury, sociability needed ridicule and laughter: …

Ned Ward [ Commerce / Art and Literature ]

… sociability was not one to which everyone subscribed. People > Commerce People > Art and Literature Keywords ward Satire humour Tavern drunkenness impoliteness Club London Edward ‘Ned’ Ward was a satirist and tavern keeper, most widely … parks, taverns and coffeehouses. He wrote to entertain, and satirical exaggeration was germane to the endeavour, but his humour nevertheless rested on common reference points and lampooning the familiar: it thus offers a valuable contemporary … described London as having ‘an infinity of clubs or societies for the improvement of learning and keeping up with good humour and mirth’. 8  Ward’s satire skewers this fashion, with almost four hundred pages detailing thirty-two clubs and …

Richard Steele [ Art and Literature / Politics ]

… and ‘gallantry’, mixed with moral guidance) in a periodical essay format, with some politics and news, lightened with humour. He was nevertheless also a highly partisan polemicist and had a relatively circumscribed view of who constituted … and ‘gallantry’, mixed with moral guidance) in a periodical essay format, with some politics and news, lightened with humour. The paper was given a lead by Steele but involved a club of writers. Steele sought to offer instruction, … qualities: ‘A Man that is Temperate, Generous, Valiant, Chaste, Faithful and Honest, may, at the same time, have Wit, Humour, Mirth, Good-breeding, and Gallantry’. 12  He was also to have an apparently effortless ‘Ease in his Countenance …

James Boswell [ Art and Literature ]

… brought Johnson and Wilkes, the bitterest of political rivals, together in an atmosphere of sociability and mutual good humour, though the good humour found its focus in making jokes at Boswell’s expense. But this was part of Boswell’s talent, not only relishing … add ‘the manners’ of his friend the Edinburgh actor ‘Mr Digges’ ( London Journal  89).  A proper balance of sentiment, humour and manners, in other words, is necessary for Boswellian sociability, no matter what the activity, and …

Scriblerus Club [ Clubs & Societies / Associational culture ]

… institution like the Kit-Cat Club and much more a concept of artistic creativity that derived from a shared sense of humour as well as a shared sense of aspects of society and culture that were worthy of criticism and satire. Its real …

Richard Brinsley Sheridan [ Art and Literature / Politics / Association ]

… Sheridan for dinner […] Sheridan for claret or port […] Sheridan was a grenadier company of lifeguards’ ; ‘ Sheridan’s humour, or rather wit, was always saturnine, and sometimes savage’ (Moore, Letters of Lord Byron, 400) and exemplified …