Topographies of politeness

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 12, Issue , 2002, Pages 355-374

  Sweet, R H ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; HISTORY; METHODOLOGY; POLICY; RURAL POPULATION; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIAL CONTROL; SOCIAL WELFARE; UNITED KINGDOM; URBAN POPULATION;

EDUCATION; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; LONDON; PUBLIC POLICY; RURAL POPULATION; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIAL CONTROL, INFORMAL; SOCIAL WELFARE; URBAN POPULATION;

EID: 13944253471     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0080440102000142     Document Type: Review

References (86)

1. Alexander Hay, History of Chichester (Chichester, 1804), 331
2. Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), 149-50
3. Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994), 11
4. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein, (Cambridge, 1999), 31
5. Lawrence E. Klein, 'Politeness for Plebes: Consumption and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England', in The Culture of Consumption: Image, Object, Text, ed. John Brewer and Ann Bermingham (1995)
6. and idem, 'Coffee-House Civility, 1660-1714: An Aspect of Post-Courtly Culture in England', Huntington Library Quarterly, 59 (1997)
7. Nicholas Phillipson, 'The Scottish Enlightenment', in The Enlightenment in National Context, ed. Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (Cambridge, 1981)
8. idem, 'Politics, Politeness and the Anglicisation of Early Eighteenth-Century Scottish Culture', in Scotland and England, 1280-1815, ed. Roger Mason (Edinburgh, 1987)
9. David Hume, 'Of Refinement in the Arts', in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, 1985)
10. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4 vols., 1765-9), III, 326
11. See Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People (Oxford, 1989), 1-2
12. Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance (Oxford, 1989)
13. The Polite Companion (2 vols., Birmingham, 1749), I, iii
14. George Whitefield, The Polite and Fashionable Diversions of the Day Destructive to Soul and Body (1740)
15. J. Macky, A Journey through England (1724), 154
16. The major study of travel writing as a literary genre in the eighteenth century remains Charles Batten, Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978)
17. Peter Borsay, 'The London Connection: Cultural Diffusion and the Eighteenth-Century Provincial Town', London Journal, 19: I (1994)
18. Charles Heath, 'Former and Present State of Monmouth', in Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Ancient and Present State of the Town of Monmouth (Monmouth, 1804), no pagination
19. National Library of Wales, Ward MS 19758A, 'A Tour through South Wales and the Western and Southern Counties of England', fo. 21
20. Aeneas Mackenzie, Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1827), 731-2
21. Nathaniel Spencer, The Complete English Traveller; or a New Survey and Description of England and Wales (1771), 281, 464, 440
22. John Ogilby, Britannia: By a Geographical and Historical Description of the Principal Roads Thereof (1675)
23. George Poulson, Beverlac: The Antiquities and History of the Town of Beverley in the County of York (1829), 68
24. cf. William Hutton, A History of Birmingham (2nd edn, Birmingham, 1783), 260: 'According as a country is improved in her roads, so will she stand in the scale of civilization ... The manners and the roads of the English, have been refining together for about 1700 years.'
25. An American Quaker in the British Isles: The Travel Journals fo Jabez Maude Fisher, 1775-1779, ed. K. Morgan (Oxford, 1992), 50
26. Spencer, Complete English Traveller, 537
27. Passages from the Diaries of Mrs Philip Lybbe Powys, 1756-1805, ed. C. J. Climenson (1899), 25
28. Macky, Journey through England, 238
29. Edmund Gillingwater, Historical and Descriptive Account of St Edmund's Bury in the County of Suffolk (St Edmund's Bury, 1804), 2
30. Samuel Simpson, The Agreeable Historian: Or, the Compleat English Traveller (1746), 291
31. Norwich, Bristol's rival for second position for the first half of the century, never attracted as much comment, due, one may assume, to its rather more remote location and the less obvious extremes of wealth generated there
32. For a survey of different travellers' reactions to Bristol, see Peter T. Marcy, 'Eighteenth-Century Views of Bristol and Bristolians', in Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Patrick McGrath (Newton Abbot, 1972), 11-40
33. Thomas Cox, Magna Britannia et Hibernia, Antiqua et Nova: Or a New Survey of Great Britain (6 vols., 1720-31), IV, 744
34. Cited by Marcy, 'Eighteenth-Century Views of Bristol', 20
35. An Eighteenth Century Correspondence: Letters to Sanderson Miller, ed. Lilian Dickins and Mary Stanton (1910), 20
36. R. H. Sulivan, Observations Made during a Tour through Parts of England, Scotland and Wales (1778), 92
37. A Frenchman in England 1784: Being the Mélanges sur l'Angleterre of François de la Rochefoucauld, ed. Jean Marchand, trans. S. C. Roberts (1995), 21
38. Marcy, 'Eighteenth-Century Views of Bristol', 34
39. Klein, 'Politeness and Plebes', notes that the antonyms to 'politeness' shifted from rusticity and barbarism towards more frequent use of 'vulgarity' over the eighteenth century
40. This was Samuel Johnson's verdict on the character of Mr Smith in Fanny Burney's Evelina. Quoted in James Raven, Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750-1800 (Oxford, 1992), 135
41. Climenson, Passages from the Diaries of Mrs Philip Lybbe Powys, 49
42. The Travels through England of Dr Richard Pococke, ed. J. J. Cartwright (Camden Society, 42, 1887), 8
43. J. Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles around Manchester (1795), 353
44. James Wallace, A General and Descriptive History of the Ancient and Present State of the Town of Liverpool (2nd edn, Liverpool, 1797), 268
45. The Journeys of Sir Richard Colt Hoare through Wales and England 1793-1810, ed. M. W. Thompson (Gloucester, 1983), 156
46. The Torrington Diaries, ed. C. Bruyn Andrews (4 vols., repr. 1970), III, 116
47. The Noels and the Milbankes, ed. M. Elwin (1967), 108
48. This view is recurrently expressed by Byng in all his tours through Britain, but see also, for example, Sir John Cullum's entry for 6 Aug. on his tour through the west of England in 1779: 'I am much pleased with this Excursion to this extreem western Part - for all extreem Parts exhibit Mankind in a more plain and primitive Character, than where they approach large and populous Cities - and I was also pleased to find that my Fellow Creatures, even in these Remote Regions, which we are apt to suppose the scenes of excessive Misery and Degredation, had the appearance of as much Comfort and Civilization as in the more populous and opulent parts.' West Suffolk Record Office, E33/2/2. This MS is unfoliated
49. Jonathan Barry, 'Civility and Civic Culture in Early Modern England: The Meanings of Urban Freedom', in Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, ed. Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack (Oxford, 2000), esp. 181-2, 195-6
50. Thomas Hinderwell, The History and Antiquities of Scarborough and the Vicinity (Scarborough, 1798), 270, 40 per cent of subscribers were locally based, of the remaining 60 per cent around 5 per cent came from London
51. See Rosemary Sweet, The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1997)
52. See, for example, Joseph Hunter, Hallamshire: The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York (1819), 122-5
53. Richard Warner, The History of Bath (1801), 349
54. Anon., History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1810), v-vi
55. Anon., The Picture of Liverpool or Stranger's Guide (Liverpool, 1808), 195
56. John Blackner, The History of Nottingham (Nottingham, 1815), 194-5
57. Hutton, History of Birmingham, 259
58. William Hutton, The History of Derby (1791), 186
59. Anon., A Modern Delineation of the Town and Port of Kingston upon Hull: Being an Accurate Guide to All the Various Objects of Public Interest or Importance, Curiosity or Amusement in Hull and its Environs (Hull, 1805), 39
60. William Moss, The Liverpool Guide (2nd edn, Liverpool, 1797), 144
61. Andrew Brice, The Grand Gazeteer or Topographical Dictionary (Exeter, 1759), 550
62. Henry Manship, The History of Great Yarmouth, c. 1619, ed. C. J. Palmer (1854), 118: 'This town is in regard of the people, civil; for entertainment of strangers, courteous.'
63. John Harris, An Essay on Politeness (1775)
64. Anon., The History and Antiquities and Present State of the Town of Nottingham (Nottingham, 1807), 18
65. [Paul Dunvan], Ancient and Modern History of Lewes and Brighthelmston (Lewes, 1795), 359
66. Anon., The History of Liverpool from the Earliest Authenticated Period to the Present Time (Liverpool, 1810), 236
67. William Dyde, The History and Antiquities of Tewkesbury (2nd edn, Tewkesbury, 1798), 81. Dyde was also the publisher of a miscellany called Farrago (Tewkesbury, 1792), which included an essay on politeness, defining it as: 'the assimulation of our behaviour to the practice of all those qualities that form the most refined pleasures of social intercourse, the appearance of universal benevolence, generosity, modesty, and of making our own happiness spring from the accommodation of others' (p. 96)
68. G. Redford and G. H. Riches, The History of the Ancient Town and Borough of Uxbridge (Uxbridge, 1818), 134-5
69. R. J. Morris, 'Middle Class Culture 1700-1914, in A History of Modern Leeds, ed. D. Fraser (1980), 204-5
70. A. Stark, The History of Lincoln (Lincoln, 1810), 275
71. B. Boothroyd, The History of the Ancient Borough of Pontefract (Pontefract, 1807), 495
72. P. Brown, The History of Norwich from the Earliest Records to the Present Time (Norwich, 1814), 98
73. John Chambers, A General History of Worcester (Worcester, 1819), I, quoting a comment made by Valentine Green in 1795
74. C. Sharp, History of Hartlepool (1816), 145
75. On this issue see Philip Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society in Britain 1660-1800 (2000), 78-80, 89-90
76. John Trusler, The Principles of Politeness and of Knowing the World, in Two Parts (16th edn, 1800)
77. Penelope J. Corfield, 'The Rivals: Landed and Other Gentlemen', in Land and Society in Britain, 1700-1914: Essays in Honour of F. M. L. Thompson, ed. Negley Harte and Roland Quinault (Manchester, 1996)
78. Strother's Journal: Written by a Tradesman of York and Hull 1784-5, ed. Caesar Caine (1912), 50-1, entry for 5 Nov.: 'yesterday was an assembly for tradesmen at Cresswell's Coffee Rooms. So opulent are the middling rank of tradesmen as to vie with the first of the gentry.'
79. Daniel Defoe, Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (4 vols., 1778), I 165: 'Brighthelmstone is now become a polite place by the annual resort of gentry in the summer season'; II, 239 (Bristol) and 372 (Birmingham)
80. J. Jefferson Loony, 'Cultural Life in the Provinces: Leeds and York, 1720-1820, in The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Laurence Stone, ed. A. C. Beier, D. Cannadine and J. M. Rosenheim (Cambridge, 1989)
81. Defoe, Tour through Great Britain (1778), II, 336
82. VCH Staffordshire, XIV (Oxford, 1990), 161-80
83. Tate Wilkinson, Memoirs of his Own Life (4 vols., York, 1790), IV, 19
84. Torrington Diaries, ed. Bruyn Andrews I, 227
85. Passages from the Diaries, ed. Climenson, 134
86. Anon., A Picture of Carlisle, and Directory; Containing an Historical and Topographical Account of that City (Carlisle, 1810), 87-8, 109