Yallop looks at how people in eighteenth-century England understood and dealt with growing older. Though no word for ‘aging’ existed at this time, a person’s age was a significant aspect of their identity.

This innovative collection of essays re-examines conventional ideas of the history of childhood, exploring the child's increasing prominence in eighteenth-century discourse and the establishment of the category of age as a marker of social distinction alongside race, class and gender. While scholars often approach childhood within the context of a single nation, this collection takes a comparative approach, examining the child in British, German and French contexts and demonstrating the mutual influences between the Continent and Great Britain in the conceptualization of childhood. Covering a wide range of subjects, from scientific and educational discourses on the child and controversies over the child's legal status and leisure activities, to the child as artist and consumer, the essays shed light on well-known novels like Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones, as well as on less-familiar texts such as periodicals, medical writings, trial reports and schoolbooks. Articles on visual culture show how eighteenth-century discourses on childhood are reflected in representations of the child by illustrators and portraitists. The international group of contributors, including Peter Borsay, Patricia Crown, Bernadette Fort, Brigitte Glaser, Klaus Peter Jochum, Dorothy Johnson and Peter Sabor, represent the disciplines of history, literature and art and reflect the collection's commitment to interdisciplinarity. The volume's unique range of topics makes it essential reading for students and scholars concerned with the history and representation of childhood in eighteenth-century culture.

Wahrman argues that toward the end of the 18th century there was a radical change in notions of self & personal identity - a sudden transformation that was a revolution in the understanding of selfhood & of identity categories including race, gender, & class.

Through case studies from diverse fields of cultural studies, this collection examines how different constructions of identity were mediated in England during the long eighteenth century. While the concept of identity has received much critical attention, the question of how identities were mediated usually remains implicit. This volume engages in a critical discussion of the connection between historically specific categories of identity determined by class, gender, nationality, religion, political factions and age, and the media available at the time, including novels, newspapers, trial reports, images and the theatre. Representative case studies are the arrival of children's literature as a genre, the creation of masculine citizenship in Defoe's novels, the performance of gendered and national identities by the actress Kitty Clive or in plays by Henry Fielding and Richard Sheridan, fashion and the public sphere, the emergence of the Whig and Tory parties, the radical culture of the 1790s, and visual representations of domestic and imperial landscape. Recognizing the proliferation of identities in the epoch, these essays explore the ways in which different media determined constructions of identity and were in turn shaped by them.

This book considers the controversy caused by 'nabobs', and the debate regarding British identity and British imperialism in the late eighteenth century.

The eighteenth century is recognized as a complex period of dramatic epistemic shifts that would have profound effects on the modern world. Paradoxically, the art of the era continues to be a relatively neglected field within art history. While women's private lives, their involvement with cultural production, the project of Enlightenment, and the public sphere have been the subjects of ground-breaking historical and literary studies in recent decades, women's engagement with the arts remains one of the richest and most under-explored areas for scholarly investigation. This collection of new essays by specialist authors addresses women's activities as patrons and as "patronized" artists over the course of the century. It provides a much needed examination, with admirable breadth and variety, of women's artistic production and patronage during the eighteenth century. By opening up the specific problems and conflicts inherent in women's artistic involvements from the perspective of what was at stake for the eighteenth-century women themselves, it also acts as a corrective to the generalizing and stereotyping about the prominence of those women, which is too often present in current day literature. Some essays are concerned with how women's involvement in the arts allowed them to fashion identities for themselves (whether national, political, religious, intellectual, artistic, or gender-based) and how such self-fashioning in turn enabled them to negotiate or intervene in the public domains of culture and politics where "The Woman Question" was so hotly debated. Other essays examine how men's patronage of women also served as a vehicle for self-fashioning for both artist and sponsor. Artists and patrons discussed include: Carriera; Queen Lovisa Ulrike and Chardin; the Bourbon Princesses Mlle Clermont, Mme Adélaïde and Nattier; the Duchess of Osuna and Goya; Marie-Antoinette and Vigée-Lebrun; Labille-Guiard; Queen Carolina of Naples, Prince Stanislaus Poniatowski of Poland and Kauffman; David and his students, Mesdames Benoist, Lavoisier and Mongez.

Explores the changing aspirations, attitudes and identities of English Catholics in the late eighteenth century This book explores the changing aspirations, attitudes and identities of English Catholics in the late eighteenth century, a period which marked a critical moment of transition in their spiritual, political and intellectual culture. It is based on the experiences of the English Catholic baronet, Grand Tourist and politician Sir Thomas Gascoigne (1745-1810). Gascoigne was born on the Continent into a devout Catholic family based in Yorkshire; however, following an unusual Continental upbringing and extensive series of Grand Tours to the courts of Catholic Europe, he would abjure his faith for a seat in Parliament. Throughout his life, he was an important advocate of agricultural reform, a considerable coal owner interested in mining engineering, as well as a keen developer of spa culture. By examining the experiences of Gascoigne and his milieu, this book explores English Catholic attitudes towards continental Catholicism, the influence of the European Enlightenment upon their education and outlook, and how this affected their Christianity, their estates and their conception of national identity. It demonstrates how increased toleration entailed a gradual rejection amongst English Catholics of a pious separatism for a more ecumenical and, ultimately, Enlightened approach to religion. Although this risked the loss of English Catholics to Anglicanism, many - like Gascoigne - remained crypto-Catholic in sympathy. They adapted their faith to the Enlightenment and regarded it as a matter of personal conviction and private choice. ALEXANDER LOCK is Curator of Modern Historical Manuscripts at the British Library.

This book explores the links between age relations and cultural change, using an innovative analytical framework to map the incremental and contingent process of generational transition in eighteenth-century England. The study reveals how attitudes towards age were transformed alongside perceptions of gender, rank and place. It also exposes how shifting age relations affected concepts of authenticity, nationhood, patriarchy, domesticity and progress. The eighteenth century is not generally associated with the formation of distinct generations. This book, therefore, charts new territory as an age cohort in Newcastle upon Tyne is followed from infancy to early adulthood,using their experiences to illuminate a national, and ultimately imperial, pattern of change. The chapters begin in the nurseries and schoolrooms in which formative years were spent and then traverse the volatile terrain of adolescence, before turning to the adult world of fashion and politics. This investigation uncovers the roots of a generational divide that spilled into the political arena during the parliamentary election of 1774. But more than that,it demonstrates that the interactions between age groups were central to major social and cultural developments in the eighteenth century and serves as a powerful reminder of the need to recognise that people lived through not in the past.tional divide that spilled into the political arena during the parliamentary election of 1774. But more than that,it demonstrates that the interactions between age groups were central to major social and cultural developments in the eighteenth century and serves as a powerful reminder of the need to recognise that people lived through not in the past.tional divide that spilled into the political arena during the parliamentary election of 1774. But more than that,it demonstrates that the interactions between age groups were central to major social and cultural developments in the eighteenth century and serves as a powerful reminder of the need to recognise that people lived through not in the past.tional divide that spilled into the political arena during the parliamentary election of 1774. But more than that,it demonstrates that the interactions between age groups were central to major social and cultural developments in the eighteenth century and serves as a powerful reminder of the need to recognise that people lived through not in the past.

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Based on a solid foundation of archival research that ranges from tax rolls to notarial records, this study adds an important chapter to our understanding of women in pre-industrial Europe. Through a rigorous examination of primary documents peculiar to eighteenth-century Brittany, the author demonstrates the difficulties engendered in broad generalities about European women, and makes a strong case for the necessity for historians to account for regional differences in women's experiences. In particular, Nancy Locklin makes a compelling argument for the need to incorporate a broader basis upon which women attained their identity. Indeed, Locklin rightly contends that most women in pre-industrial European societies were recognized (and perhaps saw themselves) through a variety of identities over the course of their lives, depending on their age, familial connections, marital status, and the type of work they performed, and that often these identities overlapped. Locklin also shows the extent to which legal and ideological prescriptions painted a relatively negative picture of women's status, but that a close examination of women's participation in family, community, and commercial affairs reveals a much more complex and divergent reality.