Revisiting The Polite and Commercial People

Elaine Chalus (FRHistS) is Professor of British History at the University of Liverpool. An expert on gender and political culture, Elaine completed her doctorate under Paul Langford. Her numerous publications - especially Elite Women in English Political Life c.1754-1790 (2005) - owe much to his guidance. She is currently preparing a monograph for OUP, based on the forty surviving volumes of Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle's journals. She serves on editorial boards for Women's History Review, Parliamentary History Journal, and the History of Parliament Trust, where she is Section Editor for the House of Lords, 1660-1832.Perry Gauci is currently the VHH Green Fellow in British History at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was fortunate to be one of Paul Langford's undergraduate students at the college, and his interests in eighteenth-century social and political history owe so much to Paul's teaching and published work.

• Elaine Chalus and Perry Gauci: Introduction: Paul Langford (1945-2015) Politics 1: William A. Pettigrew: The Public Life and Death of a Propertied, but Artificial Person: The Divestment of the Royal African Company and a Reconciliation of Parliamentary Supremacy and the Sanctity of Property, 1747-52 2: Perry Gauci: East Meets West: John Paterson and the Politics of Improvement in Georgian London 3: Paul Seaward: Parliament Observed: The Gallery of the Old House of Commons 4: Cindy McCreery: The Sailor, the Lover, the Husband, and the King: Images of William IV and Change and Continuity in Visual Representations of Elite English society, 1765-1837 Society and Culture 5: Ian Doolittle: The City of London in the Eighteenth century: Corporate Pressures and their Consequences 6: Bob Harris: Fantasy, Speculation, and the British State Lottery in the Eighteenth Century 7: Hannah Barker: A Devout and Commercial people: Religion and Trade in Manchester during the Long Eighteenth Century 8: Rosemary Sweet: Antiquarian Transformations in Historical Scholarship: The History of Domesticity from Joseph Strutt to Thomas Wright Britain and the World 9: Peter Marshall: A Polite and Commercial People in the Caribbean: the British in St Vincent 10: Andrew O'Shaughnessy: British Imperial Policy and the American Revolution 11: Leslie Mitchell: The Harcourts: Anglo-French Relations in a Time of Revolution 12: Elaine Chalus: Becoming an Englishwoman: Gender, Politeness, and Identity in the Age of Revolutions 13: Joanna Innes: Afterword: Polite and Commercial's Twin: Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689-1789 A Bibliography of the Major Works of Paul Langford

Revisiting the Polite and Commercial People is both a memorial festschrift to Langford and an extended reflection upon the themes that have made the book such an enduring, and influential, reference point in the thirty years since its publication.