Enfilade

Part of the Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections series from Cambridge UP:

Meghan Kobza, The Domino and the Eighteenth-Century London Masquerade: A Social Biography of a Costume (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 75 pages, ISBN: 978-1009468244 (hardcover), $65 / ISBN: 978-1009045551 (paperback), $22. Also available digitally through Cambridge UP.

This Element presents new cultural, social, and economic perspectives on the eighteenth-century London masquerade through an in-depth analysis of the classic domino costume. Constructing the object biography of the domino through material, visual, and written sources, Meghan Kobza brings together various experiences of the masquerade and expand the existing geographical, chronological, and socio-economic scope of the entertainment beyond the masquerade event itself. The book examines the domino’s physical and figurative movements from the masquerade warehouse, through eighteenth-century fashionable society, and into print and visual culture, drawing upon masquerade warehouse records, newspapers, manuscripts, prints, and physical objects to establish a comprehensive understanding of the domino and how it reflected contemporary experiences of the real and imagined masquerade. Analysing the domino through interdisciplinary methodologies illustrates the impact material and visual sources can have on reshaping existing scholarship.

Meghan Kobza is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University, where she completed her PhD in 2020. As a social historian, she is particularly interested in the history of eighteenth-century leisure culture in the British Empire and transatlantic world.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
1  The Masquerade and the Domino
2  Three Dominos
3  The Domino as a Commodity
4  Everywhere and Nowhere
Conclusion

References