Further autograph letters of Hester Lynch Piozzi to William Augustus Conway have come to light, which show the depth of her affection for Conway and help to reveal the character of a man whose birth, life, and death have always been shrouded in mystery.

From Pierre de Fermat to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Graham Greene, readers have related to books through the notes they write in the margins. In this pioneering book--the first to examine the phenomenon of marginalia--H.J. Jackson surveys an extraordinary range of annotated books to explore the history of marginalia, the forms they take, the psychology that underlies them, and the reactions they provoke. Based on a study of thousands of books annotated by readers both famous and obscure over the last three centuries, this book reveals the intensity of emotion that characterizes the process of reading. For hundreds of years, readers have talked to other people in the margins of their books--not only to authors, but also to friends, lovers, and future generations. With an infectious enthusiasm for her subject, Jackson reflects on the cultural and historical value of writing in the margins, examines works that have invited passionate annotation, and presents examples of some of the most provocative marginalia. Imaginative, amusing, and poignant, this book will be treasured by--and maybe even annotated by--anyone who cares about reading.

Scholars and readers who are interested in eighteenth-century British literature are surely familiar with Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi in the light she came to be known in her lifetime and after: first, as the “formidable hostess” of Streatham House, South London, and then as an outcast from respectable eighteenth-century society after she had married the Italian piano teacher of her daughter. As a writer, her importance has long been that of a footnote to Samuel Johnson and as a consequence, she has been part of the official British literary canon only as a character. This volume introduces Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi as a whole, trying to link her fascinating and subversive biography to her development as a writer, emphasizing the innovative issues of her works, her style and her social and personal beliefs. Piozzi’s biography is an interesting example of the dynamic scene of the late eighteenth century, where she was both conservative and subversive: she was an eccentric, and although her decision to marry the Italian singer and composer Gabriele Piozzi disgraced her, it was through this act of subversion that Hester Thrale Piozzi could finally make her own entrance into the world as a public writer. Once she had transgressed the social codes of so-called “feminine” behaviour, she was also ready to move into the public sphere, publish her works and make money out of them, pioneering several traditional literary genres through her passionate search for professional independence in the literary canon of the eighteenth century.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An illuminating group portrait of the eighteenth-century women who dared to imagine an active life for themselves in both mind and spirit. In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women. Elizabeth Montagu established one of the most famous salons of the Bluestocking movement, with everyone from royalty to revolutionaries clamoring for an invitation to attend. Her younger sister, Sarah Scott, imagined a female-run society and created a women’s commune. Meanwhile, Hester Thrale, who also had a salon, saved her husband’s brewery from bankruptcy and, after being widowed, married a man she loved—Italian, Catholic, and not of her social class. Other women made a name for themselves through their publications, including Catharine Macaulay, author of an eight-volume history of England, and Frances Burney, author of the audacious novel Evelina. In elegant prose, Gibson reveals the close and complicated relationships between these women, how they supported and admired each other, and how they sometimes judged and exploited one another. Some rebelled quietly, while others defied propriety with adventurous and scandalous lives. With moving stories and keen insight, The Bluestockings uncovers how a group of remarkable women slowly built up an eviscerating critique of their male-dominated world that society was not yet ready to hear.

This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions. Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her Subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works. In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.

He spent three months in New Orleans buying cotton with the legacy and shipping it to England, but he also made the most of a once-in-a-life-time opportunity by staying in America for almost a year to see as much of the country and its institutions as he could.".

Chosen by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Until recently, history writing has been understood as a male enclave from which women were restricted, particularly prior to the nineteenth century. The first book to look at British women writers and their contributions to historiography during the long eighteenth century, British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820, asks why, rather than writing history that included their own sex, some women of this period chose to write the same kind of history as men—one that marginalized or excluded women altogether. But as Devoney Looser demonstrates, although British women's historically informed writings were not necessarily feminist or even female-focused, they were intimately involved in debates over and conversations about the genre of history. Looser investigates the careers of Lucy Hutchinson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Charlotte Lennox, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Austen and shows how each of their contributions to historical discourse differed greatly as a result of political, historical, religious, class, and generic affiliations. Adding their contributions to accounts of early modern writing refutes the assumption that historiography was an exclusive men's club and that fiction was the only prose genre open to women.

Drama in the Romantic period underwent radical changes affecting theatre performance, acting, and audience. Theatres were rebuilt and expanded to accommodate larger audiences, and consequently acting styles and the plays themselves evolved to meet the expectations of the new audiences. This book examines manifestations of change in acting, stage design, setting, and the new forms of drama. Actors exercised a persistent habit of stepping out of their roles, whether scripted or not. Burwick traces the radical shifts in acting style from Garrick to Kemble and Siddons, and to Kean and Macready, adding a new dimension to understanding the shift in cultural sensibility from early to later Romantic literature. Eye-witness accounts by theatre-goers and critics attending plays at the major playhouses of London, the provinces, and on the Continent are provided, allowing readers to identify with the experience of being in the theatre during this tumultuous period.

The most comprehensive state project of its kind, the Dictionary provides information on some 4,000 notable North Carolinians whose accomplishments and occasional misdeeds span four centuries. Much of the bibliographic information found in the six volumes has been compiled for the first time. All of the persons included are deceased. They are native North Carolinians, no matter where they made the contributions for which they are noted, or non-natives whose contributions were made in North Carolina.

The debate over extending full civil rights to British and Irish Catholics not only preoccupied British politics but also informed the romantic period's most prominent literary works. This book offers the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of Catholic Emancipation, one of the romantic period's most contentious issues.