The eighteenth century has been hailed for its revolution in consumer culture, but Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain repositions Britain as a nation of makers. It brings new attention to eighteenth-century craftswomen and men with its focus on the material knowledge possessed not only by professional artisans and amateur makers, but also by skilled consumers. This edited collection gathers together a group of interdisciplinary scholars working in the fields of art history, history, literature, and museum studies to unearth the tactile and tacit knowledge that underpinned fashion, tailoring, and textile production. It invites us into the workshops, drawing rooms, and backrooms of a broad range of creators, and uncovers how production and tacit knowledge extended beyond the factories and machines which dominate industrial histories. This book illuminates, for the first time, the material literacies learnt, enacted, and understood by British producers and consumers. The skills required for sewing, embroidering, and the textile arts were possessed by a large proportion of the British population: men, women and children, professional and amateur alike. Building on previous studies of shoppers and consumption in the period, as well as narratives of manufacture, these essays document the multiplicity of small producers behind Britain's consumer revolution, reshaping our understanding of the dynamics between making and objects, consumption and production. It demonstrates how material knowledge formed an essential part of daily life for eighteenth-century Britons. Craft technique, practice, and production, the contributors show, constituted forms of tactile languages that joined makers together, whether they produced objects for profit or pleasure.

Charlotte Lennox (c. 1729-1804) was an eighteenth-century English novelist whose most celebrated work, The Female Quixote (1752), is just one of eighteen works spanning a forty-three year career. Susan Carlile's critical biography of Lennox focuses on her role as the central figure in the professionalization of authorship in England.

A colourful account of women’s health, beauty, and cosmetic aids, from stays and corsets to today’s viral trends Victorian women ate arsenic to achieve an ideal, pale complexion, while in the 1790s balloon corsets were all the rage, designed to make the wearer appear pregnant. Women of the eighteenth century applied blood from a black cat’s tail to problem skin, while doctors in the 1880s promoted woollen underwear to keep colds at bay. Beautification and the pursuit of health may seem all-consuming today, but their history is long and fantastically varied. Ranging across the last four hundred years, Margarette Lincoln examines women’s health and beauty in fascinating detail. Through first-hand accounts and reports of physicians, quacks, and advertising, Lincoln captures women’s lived experience of consuming beauty products, and the excitement—and trauma—of adopting the latest fashion trends. Considering everything from body sculpture, diet, and exercise to skin, teeth, and hair, Perfection is a vibrant account of women’s body-fashioning—and shows how intimately these practices are related to community and identity throughout history.

This book is a detailed investigation of a lively and innovative period in London's cultural life.

From the award-winning author of The Gentleman’s Daughter,a witty and academic illumination of daily domestic life in Georgian England. In this brilliant work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, she introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dormer in her stately Oxfordshire mansion, bachelor clerk and future novelist Anthony Trollope in his dreary London lodgings, genteel spinsters keeping up appearances in two rooms with yellow wallpaper, servants with only a locking box to call their own. Vickery makes ingenious use of upholsterer’s ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long eighteenth century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition. The basis of a 3-part TV series for BBC2. “Vickery is that rare thing, an…historian who writes like a novelist.”—Jane Schilling, Daily Mail “Comparison between Vickery and Jane Austen is irresistible…This book is almost too pleasurable, in that Vickery's style and delicious nosiness conceal some seriously weighty scholarship.”—Lisa Hilton, The Independent “If until now the Georgian home has been like a monochrome engraving, Vickery has made it three dimensional and vibrantly colored. Behind Closed Doors demonstrates that rigorous academic work can also be nosy, gossipy, and utterly engaging.”—Andrea Wulf, New York Times Book Review

The story of the world's first fashion-obsessed society in eighteenth-century London - and the colourful tales of extravagance, vanity, intrigue, and sexual indiscretion that accompanied it

Each period in the history of costume has produced its own characteristic line and silhouette, derived from a cut and construction which varies considerably from age to age. Here are patterns taken from actual dresses, many of them rare museum specimens, illustrated by sketches of the dresses. There are notes on the production of women's dress, with references to early technical books and journals, together with diagrams from some of them. Numerous illustrations show the dresses as worn complete with their hairstyles, jewelry, decorations and accessories.

This lively and beautifully illustrated account follows some remarkable eighteenth-century women in their gardens.

Georgian landscape gardens are among the most visited and enjoyed of the UK's historical treasures. The Georgian garden has also been hailed as the greatest British contribution to European Art, seen as a beautiful composition created from grass, trees and water - a landscape for contemplation. But scratch below the surface and history reveals these gardens were a lot less serene and, in places, a great deal more scandalous.Beautifully illustrated in colour and black & white, this book is about the daily life of the Georgian garden. It reveals its previously untold secrets from early morning rides through to evening amorous liaisons. It explains how by the eighteenth century there was a desire to escape the busy country house where privacy was at a premium, and how these gardens evolved aesthetically, with modestly-sized, far-flung temples and other eye-catchers, to cater for escape and solitude as well as food, drink, music and fireworks. Its publication coincides with the 2016 tercentenary of the birth of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, arguably Britain's greatest ever landscape gardener, and the book is uniquely positioned to put Brown's work into its social context.

'The real world of Jane Austen is brought vividly to life in this beautifully written, endlessly captivating and often surprising account of Regency women. Not to be missed' Tracy Borman 'If Georgette Heyer had written non-fiction it might have looked like this' Helena Kelly, author of Jane Austen, The Secret Radical The stories of the real women of Regency high society, revealing the facts behind the fiction of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. From glossy costume dramas to gripping reads, the glamorous world of Regency London's Bon Ton is synonymous with romance - a place where dashing heroes and independently minded heroines flirt, fight and side-step scandal, all while in pursuit of the perfect match. But who were the real women who went looking for love in the age of elegance, and what were their lives really like? Taking us behind drawing room doors and into high society ballrooms, The Game of Hearts follows six leading ladies and their family, friends, and contemporaries as they move from matchmaking to matrimony and beyond. Candid insights into the competitive world of the marriage mart; real stories of rakish husbands and rich heiresses; and true tales of lost and long-lasting love, reveal not just Regency courtship customs, but truly captivating lives. Using diaries, letters and stories of scandal from the newspapers, author Felicity Day pieces together a rich and intimate view of this most beloved period of British history, showcasing the voices and opinions, hopes and desires of the real women who lived and loved in the Regency era.