Overview
Examines the intellectual world of 1750s London through the prism of the controversial figure Sir John Hill, building upon Rousseau’s important biography
Presents the 1750s as an important decade in their own right, as a time of broad metropolitan transformations in response to new knowledge and a burgeoning intellectual city life
Grants scholars a deeper understanding of the role played by ‘celebrity’ figures in forming intellectual Georgian London
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Table of contents (14 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This multi-disciplinary essay collection explores the controversial life and achievements of Sir John Hill (1714–1775), a prolific contributor to Georgian England’s literature, medicine and science. By the time he died, he had been knighted by the Swedish monarch and become a household name among scientists and writers throughout Britain and Europe. In 1750s London he was a celebrity, but he was also widely vilified.
Hill, an important writer of urban space, also helped define London through his periodicals and fictions. As well as examining his significance and achievements, this book makes Hill a means of exploring the lively intellectual and public world of London in the 1750s where rivalries abounded, and where clubs, societies, coffee-houses, theatres and pleasure gardens shaped fame and fortunes. By investigating one individual’s intersections with his metropolis, Fame and Fortune restores Hill to view and contributes new understandings of the forms and functions of eighteenth-century intellectual worlds.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Clare Brant is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture at King’s College London, UK, where she also co-directs the Centre for Life-Writing Research. She is the author of Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture which won the European Society for the Study of English Book Award in 2008.
George Rousseau of the University of Oxford, UK, is the author of Nervous Acts: Essays on and The Notorious Sir John Hill: The Man Destroyed by Ambition in the Age of Celebrity.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Fame and Fortune
Book Subtitle: Sir John Hill and London Life in the 1750s
Editors: Clare Brant, George Rousseau
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58054-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-58053-5Published: 19 December 2017
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-58054-2Published: 01 December 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXIII, 350
Number of Illustrations: 30 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, History of Science, History of Medicine, Cultural History