Helen Berry

RETHINKING POLITENESS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND: MOLL KING’S COFFEE HOUSE AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ‘FLASH TALK’

HISTORIANS are rightly suspicious of axioms, those capsules of historical ‘truth’ that pass into the received wisdom about a particular time period. Part of our job is to explode historical myth, to scrutinise and re-evaluate existing versions of the past. Yet how hard it is to think outside of the paradigms that are the legacy of an impressive bibliography and a legion of footnotes. I myself became aware of one particular paradigm regarding the cultural history of early modern England in the course of postgraduate research. I found myself straying across one of those temporal boundaries that arises from the chronological fragmentation imposed by textbooks and course syllabuses. In short, I moved from the pre-Civil-War period, with which I was then more familiar, into the early years of the long eighteenth century. It appeared to me that the literary sources from the late 1600s, which were the subject of my doctoral research, had much in common with the popular literature of earlier periods – the almanacs and chapbooks so well described by Bernard Capp, Margaret Spufford and others. The popular press of the last quarter of the seventeenth century seemed familiar territory: monstrous births, providential occurrences, and various forms of advice to young people were as much the staple diet for readers of cheap print in late seventeenth-century London as they had been in the era of Gouge and Whateley. The observation of such continuities had little relevance, however, since the preoccupation of historians studying this later period had changed.

The Pleasures of Austerity

This article challenges the paradigm of untrammelled consumer pleasures in the Georgian era by exploring the various motivations for disengagement from the dominant social codes of polite consumption. It examines the use of the terms ‘austere’ and ‘austerity’ in Georgian print culture, and the censure that resulted from being thus described. The religious and philosophical underpinnings of austerity as a stand against dominant modes of Anglicanism are considered, concluding with a case study of the fashionable physician George Cheyne, whose struggle to control his own obesity led to the formulation of a medical and dietary solution to over-consumption.

Rivers of the Anthropocene

This exciting volume presents the work and research of the Rivers of the Anthropocene Network, an international collaborative group of scientists, social scientists, humanists, artists, policymakers, and community organizers working to produce innovative transdisciplinary research on global freshwater systems. In an attempt to bridge disciplinary divides, the essays in this volume address the challenge in studying the intersection of biophysical and human sociocultural systems in the age of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch of humans’ own making. Featuring contributions from authors in a rich diversity of disciplines—from toxicology to archaeology to philosophy— this book is an excellent resource for students and scholars studying both freshwater systems and the Anthropocene. “Shows how human relationships with river systems changed along with transformations in society and culture. This book compels us to understand the historical perspectives on our relationship with nature that are so important in shaping our attitudes about both the environment and our own societies.” ANIK BHADURI, Executive Director of Future Earth’s Sustainable Water Future Programme and Associate Professor, Griffith University, Australia JASON M. KELLY is Director of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute and Associate Professor of History at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. PHILIP SCARPINO is Director of the Public History Program and Professor of History at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. HELEN BERRY is Reader in British History and Dean of Postgraduate Studies at Newcastle University. JAMES SYVITSKI is Executive Director of the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System and Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. MICHEL MEYBECK is Emeritus Senior Scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and at the METIS laboratory at the University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris 6).

Sense and Singularity: The Social Experiences of John Marsh and Thomas Stutterd in Late-Georgian England

Changing economic and social circumstances in the last quarter of the eighteenth century brought new discussions regarding the relationship between the individual, the family and the state in the evolving language of political philosophy and in the broader debates that were articulated in the popular press of the day.1 On one hand, in the half-century after 1750, we find evidence of unprecedented social and economic change, accompanied by the growing political agitation of the emergent middle classes, the dissenting voices of a groundswell of Protestant nonconformists, and the radical press, some of which went so far as to articulate Republican, even feminist ideologies. The term ‘class’ itself, anachronistic in its application to much of the period under discussion in this volume, began to have currency, as an accurate descriptor of the political consciousness and solidarity which emerged at this time between groups of the same status.2 Indeed, it is to the Georgian period that some historians have looked in order to trace the roots of modern identity, as a time when certain defining features of modern society, such as burgeoning technology, the rise of mass communication, economic opportunity and education, were made available to a growing number of people.3 An unprecedented degree of social mobility was now possible, in theory, if not in practice.