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Gentleman [ Taste & Manners / Politics & Society ]

… in eighteenth-century Britain. During the century, the term broadened away from men of lineage to encompass the rising middling sort. One criterion used to define these ‘new’ gentlemen’ was sociability, but this was a sociability that now had to … many other entries in DIGIT.EN.S. Concepts > Taste & Manners Practices > Politics & Society Keywords Politeness Rank middling sort merit sobriety The concepts of gentlemanliness and sociability were intimately entwined in …

Debating societies [ Clubs & Societies / Associational culture ]

… institutions in London and provincial cities, catering for the taste for public debate among the lower and middling sorts. Topics could be frivolous, but when societies debated politics, religion, and the economy they were felt to voice … Middle class Plebeian Public sphere Oratory Eloquence Debating societies were commercial ventures that provided the middling and lower orders with arenas of sociability where a broad range of subjects, both frivolous and serious (moral, …

Horseracing [ Games & Sports ]

… and private sociability, attracting racehorse owners and gamblers; men and women; the country and towns-folk; and elite, middling and proletariat groups. The race ground offered a liminal space encouraging social mixing and status display, … as Lewes or Stamford, and some market towns like Knutsford or Hexham, often enjoying periods of urban renewal by the middling sort, were more able to raise the higher prize money and extend facilities. Almost all could only support a single annual …

Portable directories [ Print culture ]

…  Directories were part of a booming market of services and products which catered to the needs of the emerging middling sort . Some were organised in an alphabetical order while others were structured according to trades and professions. … a wider public sphere. Not only did they fulfil practical functions but more generally they increased the influence of middling sort values on the fabric of social life. 1 The landed elites, whose status and prestige could no longer rely on …

Toasting glass [ Food & Drink ]

… and prices, varying according to social hierarchy and the type of beverage, with pewter, stoneware and the rougher sort of delftware used for alcoholic beverages, and finer, more modern and expensive chinaware and porcelain reserved for … in the late seventeenth century, flint glass, a hard, white, high-quality product, became increasingly available to the middling orders in the following decades. George Ravenscroft (1632-1683) imported glass and other products from Venice in …

Politeness [ Taste & Manners / Education ]

… spending more time in towns, which were developing in response to this change and also to the evolving aspirations of middling urban people. Famously, novel venues, often commercial in foundation, were appearing and creating new spaces of … idea of ‘the public’. 6  The rise of ‘the public’ put pressure on traditional elitist cognitive ideals: learning of all sorts, it was said, needed to be wrested from male coteries and rendered accessible to a wider segment of literate … of polite ideals. 7  Also, while politeness provided a programme of cultivation for many of the elite, the middling and the urban productive groups (not to mention, domestic servants), the ideal had no resonance with the …