Georgian Pleasures Conference, Bath

For anyone whose pocket book has some clear dates free from 12-13 of September, I must encourage you to make way to Bath at all costs.  Why you ask (although, do we ever need an excuse to venture to Bath?), well the Georgian Pleasures Conference will be held on those days and it sounds like it isn't your run-of-the-mill conference.  I'll give you three good reasons why it's not to missed.

Firstly, this conference is interdisciplinary- not just academically, but in terms of it hosting speakers from all walks of life such as dancers and reenactors.  Secondly, it's called 'Georgian Pleasures' which means it's a celebration of all the scandalous bits of the eighteenth century that we love, such as Mary Toft, prossies, and pleasure gardens. Finally, the conference ends with a big party- Georgian style.  The Holburne Museum gardens will transform into an eighteenth-century pleasure garden so bring your best mantua, no really bring it, costumes are welcome!  If you can't make it to the conference, do make a fashionably late appearance at the soiree.  I hope to see you all there!

For more information check out the conference website.

Talks on Daniel Gardner's The Three Witches from Macbeth

In a bit of shameless self-promoting news I will be giving papers in both the US and UK on Daniel Gardner's amazing portrait of Georgiana, Lady Melbourne, and Anne Damer; The Three Witches from Macbeth. 

I'll be in Middleton, CT, USA on October 13 at the NEASECS conference chatting away and then on December 3-4 I will be at Cambridge University for the very exciting conference, Charming Intentions: Occultism, Magic and the History of Art.  If anyone is in the neighborhood I would love to see you there!

Robert Darnton talks "Blogging in the 18th Century"

When Lauren and I heard that Harvard head librarian and Cultural Historian was giving a lecture on his latest interest titled Blogging in the 18th Century we knew this was an event not to be missed.  When Dr. Darnton opened his address with, "My subject is scandalous," followed by "I hope no one under the age of sixteen is here.." it confirmed we were in the right place. 

Dr. Darnton's argument was that gossip and gossip mongering is "not as trivial as we suppose" and it should be drawn on more in our study of history, especially in times and places where the society thrived on gossip such as 16th century Italy or 18th century France and England.  Not only does petty gossip of the time tell us much about the society  and its interests but it can also reveal some little known facts about historical people which shouldn't be entirely disregarded. 

But perhaps you may be wondering where the title of the lecture came from, because obviously the Duchess of Devonshire isn't sitting at her HP desktop, in the latest hat, spreading gossip via Blogger.  The answer is a very interesting and simple one.  Blogs today, especially celebrity gossip blogs (Darnton cited PerezHilton and Gawker media) deliver their scathing gossip to masses in short paragraphs to keep readers' attention.  The same was true of the newspapers of 18th century England which delivered their printed gossip in the form of short paragraphs or anecdotes, simply stating (hopefully in a witty way) the juicy news on a public figure.  The only thing missing was pictures with coke spots drawn on their noses.  Gathering this gossip was a much simpler task that of the modern paparazzi.  "Paragraph men" would sit in coffee houses listening to all the local gossip and writing down and pieces that felt worthy for the paper.  They would then submit these scraps to the papers and get paid based on factors such as the juiciness of the gossip.  Like bloggers today, there was little pay in the affair.  Also like bloggers today, the threat of plagiarism loomed (Darnton discovered in a gossip biography the minority of the content was original) although there was no mention of whether the plagiarism actually upset its victims like it does today.  Sometimes the anecdote actually cited the source of where gossip came from, so they were essentially repeating the gossip, which reminded us much of retweets (RT) on Twitter; just another means of spreading the scandal!

I've seen Dr. Darnton is due to deliver this lecture at other locations, so if you have the opportunity to hear him speak, don't delay in taking it!  For more on this topic, Dr. Darnton has an article up on the NYR Blog.