Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England

CYNTHIA KLEKAR is Assistant Professor of English and Associate Editor of Comparative Drama, Western Michigan University, USA. LINDA ZIONKOWSKI is Professor of English, Ohio University, USA.

• PART I: THEORIES OF BENEVOLENCE Rights and Reciprocity in the Political and Philosophical Discourse of Eighteenth-Century England; A.Moltchanova  & S.Ottaway Charity Education and the Spectacle of 'Christian Entertainment'; J.Smith Debt without Redemption in a World of 'Impossible Exchange': Samuel Richardson and Philanthropy; J.A.Dussinger PART II: CONDUCT AND THE GIFT 'Tis Better to Give: The Conduct Manual as Gift; M.Francus The Gift of an Education: Sarah Trimmer's Oeconomy of Charity and the Sunday School Movement; D.Williams Elliott PART III: THE EROTICS OF THE GIFT Obligation, Coercion, and Economy: The Deed of Trust in Congreve's The Way of the World; C.Klekar The Erotics of the Gift: Gender and Exchange in the Eighteenth-Century Novel; C.Haskell Hinnant Fictions of the Gift in Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall; J.Batchelor The Nation, the Gift, and the Market in The Wanderer; L.Zionkowski PART IV: THE GIFT AND COMMERCE Josiah Wedgewood's Goodwill Marketing; S.B.Egenolf Anson at Canton, 1743: Obligation, Exchange, and Ritual in Edward Page's Secret History; R.Markley

"An exceptionally rich collection, unusually well focused and well organized. Its title belies the breadth of the issues under examination, for the gift ultimately subsumes issues as diverse as poverty, charity, benevolence, sensibility, conduct, poor relief, and the emergence of the welfare state. Because such issues are usually owned by nineteenth-century studies (from the early labor history of the Hammonds up to Gertrude Himmelfarb), it is refreshing to see them pushed back into the eighteenth century. The essays draw on the rich tradition of theorists of the gift, from Mauss, Irigaray, Bourdieu, Cixous, Hyde, Derrida, and Bataille, but in conjunction with an attention to historical detail. What is finally at stake here is our central modernization narrative, the one that presumes an inevitable conflict between subordination and commercialization, when the interlocking chains of deference and obligation (Harold Perkin) are eroded by the morality of improvement (Raymond Williams). This collection will be of interest to anyone studying eighteenth-century culture." - James Thompson, Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill