Rotten Bodies

Rotten Bodies
Author: Kevin Siena
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300233523

A revealing look at how the memory of the plague held the poor responsible for epidemic disease in eighteenth-century Britain Britain had no idea that it would not see another plague after the horrors of 1666, and for a century and a half the fear of epidemic disease gripped and shaped British society. Plague doctors had long asserted that the bodies of the poor were especially prone to generating and spreading contagious disease, and British doctors and laypeople alike took those warnings to heart, guiding medical ideas of class throughout the eighteenth century. Dense congregations of the poor--in workhouses, hospitals, slums, courtrooms, markets, and especially prisons--were rendered sites of immense danger in the public imagination, and the fear that small outbreaks might run wild became a profound cultural force. Extensively researched, with a wide body of evidence, this book offers a fascinating look at how class was constructed physiologically and provides a new connection between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and the ravages of plague and cholera, respectively.

John Forbes: Scotland, Flanders and the Seven Years' War, 1707-1759

John Forbes: Scotland, Flanders and the Seven Years' War, 1707-1759
Author: John Oliphant
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2015-06-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472511786

In November 1758 Brigadier General John Forbes's army expelled the French army from Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio River. Over seven months Forbes had co-ordinated three obstructive and competitive colonies, managed Indian diplomacy, and cut a road through over a hundred miles of mountain and forest. This is the first full biography of Forbes, which traces his rise from surgeon in the Scots Greys to distinguished service in War of the Austrian Succession before his 1757 posting to North America. John Oliphant puts Forbes' life and career in the wider context of the social and military world of the 18th century and offers important insights into the Seven Years' War in North America.

Birthright: The True Story that Inspired Kidnapped

Birthright: The True Story that Inspired Kidnapped
Author: A. Roger Ekirch
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393076792

The astonishing story that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel Kidnapped. In 1728, in the wake of his father’s death, the twelve-year-old heir to five aristocratic titles and the scion of Ireland’s mighty house of Annesley was kidnapped by his uncle and shipped to America as an indentured servant. Only after twelve more years did “Jemmy” Annesley at last escape, returning to Ireland to bring his blood rival, the Earl of Anglesea, to justice in one of the most captivating trials of the century. Hundreds of years later, historian A. Roger Ekirch delves into the court transcripts and rarely seen legal depositions that chronicle Jemmy’s attempt to reclaim his birthright, in the process vividly evoking the volatile world of Georgian Ireland—complete with its violence, debauchery, ancient rituals, and tenacious loyalties.

David Garrick and the Mediation of Celebrity

David Garrick and the Mediation of Celebrity
Author: Leslie Ritchie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1108693245

What happens when an actor owns shares in the stage on which he performs and the newspapers that review his performances? Celebrity that lasts over 240 years. From 1741, David Garrick dominated the London theatre world as the progenitor of a new 'natural' style of acting. From 1747 to 1776, he was a part-owner and manager of Drury Lane, controlling most aspects of the theatre's life. In a spectacular foreshadowing of today's media convergences, he also owned shares in papers including the St James's Chronicle and the Public Advertiser, which advertised and reviewed Drury Lane's theatrical productions. This book explores the nearly inconceivable level of cultural power generated by Garrick's entrepreneurial manufacture and mediation of his own celebrity. Using new technologies and extensive archival research, this book uncovers fresh material concerning Garrick's ownership and manipulation of the media, offering timely reflections for theatre history and media studies.

Gender and Fraternal Orders in Europe, 1300–2000

Gender and Fraternal Orders in Europe, 1300–2000
Author: Máire Fedelma Cross
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2010-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230283381

What have medieval nuns, parrot shooting, Freemasonry, and Shetland revelry got in common? This study of monastic orders, guilds, Freemasonry and friendly societies over centuries and across frontiers provides new insights into their contribution to the gendering of public space and the evolution of 'separate spheres' in Europe.

Queen of the Courtesans

Queen of the Courtesans
Author: Barbara White
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-06-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0752493884

Fanny Murray was an incomparable Georgian beauty and the most desired courtesan of the 1750s. The daughter of an impoverished musician from Bath, she took London society by storm, not only as the most prized 'purchaseable beauty' of her day, but also as a fashion icon and muse to poets, writers and artists. She counted princes, aristocrats and politicians among her friends and lovers, but relished the company of rogues, fraudsters and ne'er-do-wells. Barbara White presents evidence to suggest that Fanny Murray participated spiritedly in the sexual antics of the notorious 'Monks of Medmenham', the most infamous of the Hell-fire Clubs. After she retired from prostitution, Fanny Murray reinvented herself, entering a pragmatic marriage with the Scottish actor David Ross. Surprisingly, her virtues as a devoted and faithful wife became almost proverbial. Even so, Murray could not escape her disreputable past. In 1763, a scurrilous poem dedicated to her caused a national scandal that ended in the infamous trial of the radical politician John Wilkes for obscene libel. Barbara White's portrait of Fanny Murray takes readers from the brothels of Covent Garden to sex romps at Medmenham Abbey, from refined drawing rooms in London to marital respectability in Edinburgh. This is an illuminating contribution to the scholarly understanding and popular appreciation of a complex and intriguing period of British history. Fanny Murray's triumph – against almost insuperable odds – is a remarkable story, as rich in the telling as it is enthralling.

George II

George II
Author: Andrew C. Thompson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0300118929

Despite a long and eventful reign, Britain's George II is a largely forgotten monarch, his achievements overlooked and his abilities misunderstood. This landmark biography uncovers extensive new evidence in British and German archives, making possible the most complete and accurate assessment of this thirty-three-year reign. Andrew C. Thompson paints a richly detailed portrait of the many-faceted monarch in his public as well as his private life. Born in Hanover in 1683, George Augustus first came to London in 1714 as the new Prince of Wales. He assumed the throne in 1727, held it until his death in 1760, and has the distinction of being Britain's last foreign-born king and the last king to lead an army in battle. With George's story at its heart, the book reconstructs his thoughts and actions through a careful reading of the letters and papers of those around him. Thompson explores the previously underappreciated roles George played in the political processes of Britain, especially in foreign policy, and also charts the intricacies of the king's complicated relationships and reassesses the lasting impact of his frequent return trips to Hanover. George II emerges from these pages as an independent and cosmopolitan figure of undeniable historical fascination.

Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture

Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture
Author: Heather Kerr
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2016-03-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137455411

This book explores ways in which passions came to be conceived, performed and authenticated in the eighteenth-century marketplace of print. It considers satire and sympathy in various environments, ranging from popular novels and journalism, through philosophical studies of the Scottish Enlightenment, to last words, aesthetics, and plastic surgery.

Mansions of Misery

Mansions of Misery
Author: Jerry White
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1448191815

For Londoners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, debt was a part of everyday life. But when your creditors lost their patience, you might be thrown into one of the capital’s most notorious jails: the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison. In Mansions of Misery, acclaimed chronicler of the capital Jerry White introduces us to the Marshalsea’s unfortunate prisoners – rich and poor; men and women; spongers, fraudsters and innocents. We get to know the trumpeter John Grano who wined and dined with the prison governor and continued to compose music whilst other prisoners were tortured and starved to death. We meet the bare-knuckle fighter known as the Bold Smuggler, who fell on hard times after being beaten by the Chelsea Snob. And then there’s Joshua Reeve Lowe, who saved Queen Victoria from assassination in Hyde Park in 1820, but whose heroism couldn’t save him from the Marshalsea. Told through these extraordinary lives, Mansions of Misery gives us a fascinating and unforgettable cross-section of London life from the early 1700s to the 1840s.

Fields, Fens and Felonies

Fields, Fens and Felonies
Author: Gregory J Durston
Publisher: Waterside Press
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2016-12-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1909976113

A new work on Crime and Punishment in East Anglia (and elsewhere) during the eighteenth century. It was a time of highwaymen, footpads and desperate petty offenders, draconian penalties, extremes of wealth and poverty, corruption and rough and emerging forms of justice. The contents include justices of the peace, policing, crimes, courts and judges as well as such matters as summary trial and disposal, jury trial, execution (and reprieve), a variety of offences including murder (and other homicides), violence and sexual offences, smuggling, poaching, property crimes, riots and disturbances. The book also looks at the various hierarchies that existed whether social, legal, judicial, religious, military or otherwise so as to exert a variety of social controls at a time of relative lawlessness. A fascinating and statistically absorbing account of crimes, responses and penal outcomes of the era. Neither a micro-history in the context of a parish, hundred, or small town nor national account, but a more unusual criminal justice history of a major English region with its own correlation with London and the rest of England in addition to its local differences and ‘quirks’.