… the British Isles. Conversation societies, literary societies, student clubs, subscription libraries, and local improvement societies flourished, sometimes meeting in private dwellings but more usually in hired rooms in coffeehouses, …
Audience | Coffeehouses | Conversation | Public sphere | Science
… to find the time and space to withdraw in profitable retreat from bad or frivolous company. ‘To retire is the best Improvement of Solitude’, the former diplomat Richard Bulstrode declared in 1715, ‘and to be thus Alone is the way to …