A new collection of essays which challenges many existing assumptions, particularly the conventional models of separate spheres and economic change. All the essays are specifically written for a student market, making detailed research accessible to a wide readership and the opening chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the subject describing the development of gender history as a whole and the study of eighteenth-century England. This is an exciting collection which is a major revision of the subject.
Introduction.Hannah Barker and Elaine ChalusPart One: Social reputations 2. Men about town: Representations of foppery and masculinity in early eighteenth-century urban society Philip Carter.3. The public life of actresses: prostitutes or ladies? Kimberly Crouch. Part Two: Work and poverty. 4. Women, work and the industrial revolution: female involvement in the English printing trades, c 1700-1840 Hannah Barker. 5. Women teachers and the expansion of girls schooling in England c. 1760-1820 Susan Skedd. 6. Poor women, the parish and the politics of povertyRichard Connors. Part Three: Politics and the political elite 7. `That epidemical Madness': women and electoral politics in the late eighteenth centuryElaine Chalus. 8. A politician's politician: Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire and the Whig party Amanda Foreman. Part Four: Periodicals and the printed image 9. Keeping up with the Bon Ton: the tête-à-tête series in the Town and Country Magazine Cindy McCreery. 10. `A bright pattern to all her sex': representations of women in periodical and newspaper biography Stephen Howard.Further reading. Index.