Enfilade

From the University of Delaware Press:

Chelsea Phillips, Carrying All before Her: Celebrity Pregnancy and the London Stage, 1689–1800 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2022), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1644532492, $120 / ISBN: 978-1644532485, $35.

The rise of celebrity stage actresses in the long eighteenth century created a class of women who worked in the public sphere while facing considerable scrutiny about their offstage lives. Such powerful celebrity women used the cultural and affective significance of their reproductive bodies to leverage audience support and interest to advance their careers, and eighteenth-century London patent theatres even capitalized on their pregnancies. Carrying All Before Her uses the reproductive histories of six celebrity women—Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen, Anne Oldfield, Susannah Cibber, George Anne Bellamy, Sarah Siddons, and Dorothy Jordan—to demonstrate that pregnancy affected celebrity identity, impacted audience reception and interpretation of performance, changed company repertory and altered company hierarchy, influenced the development and performance of new plays, and had substantial economic consequences for both women and the companies for which they worked. Deepening the fields of celebrity, theatre, and women’s studies, as well as social and medical histories, Phillips reveals an untapped history whose relevance and impact persists today.

Chelsea Phillips is an associate professor of theatre at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

C O N T E N T S

Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1  Inheriting Greatness: Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen and Anne Oldfield
2  Pregnant Sensibility: Susannah Cibber and George Anne Bellamy
3  Conceiving Genius: Sarah Siddons
4  Prolific Muse: Dorothy Jordan
Conclusion: Celebrity Pregnancy, Then and Now

Appendix: Birth and Christening Dates
Notes
Bibliography
Index

From the University of Delaware Press:

Anaïs Pédron and Clare Siviter, eds., Celebrity across the Channel, 1750–1850 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2021), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1644532126, $120 / ISBN: 978-1644532133, $35.

Celebrity across the Channel, 1750–1850 is the first book to study and compare the concept of celebrity in France and Britain from 1750 to 1850 as the two countries transformed into the states we recognize today. It offers a transnational perspective by placing in dialogue the growing fields of celebrity studies in the two countries, especially by engaging with Antoine Lilti’s seminal work, The Invention of Celebrity, translated into English in 2017.

With contributions from a diverse range of scholarly cultures, the volume has a firmly interdisciplinary scope over the time period 1750 to 1850, which was an era marked by social, political, and cultural upheaval. Bringing together the fields of history, politics, literature, theater studies, and musicology, the volume employs a firmly interdisciplinary scope to explore an era marked by social, political, and cultural upheaval. The organization of the collection allows for new readings of the similarities and differences in the understanding of celebrity in Britain and France. Consequently, the volume builds upon the questions that are currently at the heart of celebrity studies.

Anaïs Pédron is an independent scholar based in London, England. She has recently published the article “‘Nous aussi nous sommes citoyennes’: Female Activism during the French Revolution” in Women in French Studies (special issue 2019) and the chapter “Olympe de Gouges, anti-esclavagiste et anticolonialiste?” in Les Lumières, l’esclavage et l’idéologie coloniale: XVIIIe–XIXe siècle (2020), edited by Pascale Pellerin.

Clare Siviter is a theater historian of the longer French Revolutionary period and is lecturer in French Theatre at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Tragedy and Nation in the Age of Napoleon.

C O N T E N T S

List of Illustrations

Antoine Lilti, Preface
Anaïs Pédron and Clare Siviter, Introduction

Section I: Theorizing Celebrity
1  Chris Haffenden, ‘Immortality in This World’: Reconfiguring Celebrity and Monument in the Romantic Period
2  Blake Smith, The Scholar as Celebrity: Anquetil-Duperron’s Discours Préliminaire
3  Meagan Mason, The Physiognomies of Virtuosi in Paris, 1830–1848

Section II: Representing Celebrity
4  Anna Senkiw, ‘To Perdition’: Politicians, Players, and the Press
5  Anaïs Pédron, Clairon’s Strategies to Achieve Celebrity and Glory
6  Miranda Kiek, Celebrity—Thou Art Translated! Corinne in England
7  Clare Siviter, Celebrity across Borders: The Chevalier d’Eon

Section III: Inheriting Celebrity
8  Emrys D. Jones: ‘Knowing My Family’: Dynastic Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Celebrity Culture
9  Gabriel Wick, Princes of the Public Sphere: Visibility, Performance, and Princely Political Activism, 1771–1774
10  Ariane Viktoria Fichtl, Ancient Parallels to Eighteenth-Century Concepts of Celebrity
11  Laure Philip, The Celebrity, Reputation, and Glory of the Empire and Restoration France through the Lens of Adèle de Boigne’s Memoirs

Bibliography
About the Contributors

From The University of Chicago Press:

Claire Rydell Arcenas, America’s Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0226638607, $35.

America’s Philosopher examines how John Locke has been interpreted, reinterpreted, and misinterpreted over three centuries of American history.

The influence of polymath philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) can still be found in a dizzying range of fields, as his writings touch on issues of identity, republicanism, and the nature of knowledge itself. Claire Rydell Arcenas’s new book tells the story of Americans’ longstanding yet ever-mutable obsession with this English thinker’s ideas, a saga whose most recent manifestations have found the so-called Father of Liberalism held up as a right-wing icon.

The first book to detail Locke’s trans-Atlantic influence from the eighteenth century until today, America’s Philosopher shows how and why interpretations of his ideas have captivated Americans in ways few other philosophers—from any nation—ever have. As Arcenas makes clear, each generation has essentially remade Locke in its own image, taking inspiration and transmuting his ideas to suit the needs of the particular historical moment. Drawing from a host of vernacular sources to illuminate Locke’s often contradictory impact on American daily and intellectual life from before the Revolutionary War to the present, Arcenas delivers a pathbreaking work in the history of ideas.

Claire Rydell Arcenas is assistant professor of history at the University of Montana.

C O N T E N T S

Preface
1  Locke’s Legacy in Early America
2  Locke’s Authority in the Revolutionary and Founding Eras
3  Problematizing Locke as Exemplar in the Early United States
4  Locke Becomes Historical
5  Making Locke Relevant
6  Locke and the Invention of the American Political Tradition
7  Lockean ‘-isms’
Epilogue

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

If biographies are your summer thing, some possibilities . . .

Leo Damrosch, Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 432 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0300248289, $35.

A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch

The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin.

Drawing on seldom used materials, including the original French and Italian primary sources, and probing deeply into the psychology, self-conceptions, and self-deceptions of one of the world’s most famous con men and seducers, Leo Damrosch offers a gripping, mature, and devastating account of an Enlightenment man, freed from the bounds of moral convictions.

Leo Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. His many books include The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age and Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World, winner of the National Book Critics Circle award and Pulitzer finalist for biography. He lives in Newton, MA.

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Tristram Hunt, The Radical Potter: The Life and Times of Josiah Wedgwood (Metropolitan Books, 2021), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-1250128348, $30.

From one of Britain’s leading historians and the director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, a scintillating biography of Josiah Wedgwood, the celebrated eighteenth-century potter, entrepreneur, and abolitionist

Wedgwood’s pottery, such as his celebrated light-blue jasperware, is famous worldwide. Jane Austen bought it and wrote of it in her novels; Empress Catherine II of Russia ordered hundreds of pieces for her palace; British diplomats hauled it with them on their first-ever mission to Peking, audaciously planning to impress China with their china. But the life of Josiah Wedgwood is far richer than just his accomplishments in ceramics. He was a leader of the Industrial Revolution, a pioneering businessman, a cultural tastemaker, and a tireless scientific experimenter whose inventions made him a fellow of the Royal Society. He was also an ardent abolitionist, whose Emancipation Badge medallion—depicting an enslaved African and inscribed “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”—became the most popular symbol of the antislavery movement on both sides of the Atlantic. And he did it all in the face of chronic disability and relentless pain: a childhood bout with smallpox eventually led to the amputation of his right leg.

As historian Tristram Hunt puts it in this lively, vivid biography, Wedgwood was the Steve Jobs of the eighteenth century: a difficult, brilliant, creative figure whose personal drive and extraordinary gifts changed the way we work and live. Drawing on a rich array of letters, journals, and historical documents, The Radical Potter brings us the story of a singular man, his dazzling contributions to design and innovation, and his remarkable global impact.

Tristram Hunt is the director of the Victoria & Albert Museum and one of Britain’s best-known historians. His previous books, which include Cities of Empire: The British Colonies and the Creation of the Urban World and Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, have been published in more than a dozen languages. Until taking on the leadership of the V&A, he served as Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent, the home of Wedgwood’s potteries. A senior lecturer in British history at Queen Mary University of London, he appears regularly on BBC radio and television.

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Catherine Ostler, The Duchess Countess: The Woman Who Scandalized Eighteenth-Century London (New York: Atria Books, 2022), 432 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1982179731, $30.

As maid of honor to the Princess of Wales, Elizabeth Chudleigh (1721–1788) enjoyed a luxurious life in the inner circle of the Hanoverian court. With her extraordinary style and engaging wit, she both delighted and scandalized the press and public. She would later even inspire William Thackeray when he was writing his classic Vanity Fair, providing the inspiration for the alluring social climber Becky Sharp. But Elizabeth’s real story is more complex and surprising than anything out of fiction. A clandestine, candlelit wedding to the young heir to an earldom, a second marriage to a duke, a lust for diamonds, and an electrifying appearance at a masquerade ball in a gossamer dress—it’s no wonder that Elizabeth’s eventual trial was a sensation. Charged with bigamy, an accusation she vehemently fought against, Elizabeth refused to submit to public humiliation and retire quietly.

Catherine Ostler has been editor-in-chief of Tatler, the Evening Standard (London), and editor of The Times (London) Weekend Edition. She has also written for a wide range of publications, including Vogue, Daily Mail (London), and Newsweek. She read English at Oxford University, specializing in literature.

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Andrew Roberts, The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III (New York: Viking, 2021), 784 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1984879264, $40. In the UK: George III: The Life and Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch.

The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating—and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy.

Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon—a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff’s preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of eighteenth-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil in order to achieve their own political aims. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth: George III was in fact a wise, humane, and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers, and disastrous luck.

In The Last King of America, Roberts paints a deft and nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III’s American rule, it is time for Americans to look back on their last king with greater understanding: to see him as he was and to come to terms with the last time they were ruled by a monarch.

Andrew Roberts is the bestselling author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny; Leadership in War; The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War; Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945; Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble; and Napoleon: A Life, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and a finalist for the Plutarch Award. He has won many other prizes, including the Wolfson History Prize and the British Army Military Book of the Year. He is the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, chair of the judges of the Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize, and a visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London.

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Anna Marie Roos, Martin Folkes (1690–1754): Newtonian, Antiquary, Connoisseur (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 432 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0198830061, $100.

• First full-length biography of this eminent Enlightenment figure, mathematician, and protégé of Isaac Newton
• Contains the first complete analysis and reconstruction of the tragic life and career of Folkes’s wife, Drury Lane star Lucretia Bradshaw
• Features a novel analysis of the prints and drawings of William Hogarth with regard to the Royal Society, freemasonry, and coffeehouse culture

Martin Folkes (1690–1754): Newtonian, Antiquary, Connoisseur is a cultural and intellectual biography of the only President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Sir Isaac Newton’s protégé, astronomer, mathematician, freemason, art connoisseur, Voltaire’s friend, and Hogarth’s patron, his was an intellectually vibrant world. Folkes was possibly the best-connected natural philosopher and antiquary of his age, an epitome of Enlightenment sociability, and yet he was a surprisingly neglected figure, the long shadow of Newton eclipsing his brilliant disciple.

Anna Marie Roos is a Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Lincoln.