Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century

by Amy Prendergast

Overview

The eighteenth-century salon played an important role in shaping literary culture, while both creating and sustaining transnational intellectual networks. Focusing on archival materials, this book is the first detailed examination of the literary salon in Ireland, considered in the wider contexts of contemporary salon culture in Britain and France.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137512703
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	08/26/2015
Series:	Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print
Edition description:	1st ed. 2015
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

Amy Prendergast is Adjunct Lecturer in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She completed her doctoral studies there in 2012 after being awarded a PRTLI Government of Ireland scholarship, and was subsequently the recipient of an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship. This is her first monograph.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
2. A French Phenomenon Embraced: The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
3. "Never was a flock so scattered for want of a shepherdess": Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
4. Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
5. Collaborative Hospitality and Cultural Transfers: Provincial Salons Across England and Ireland
6. ' 'Dublin is Attribilaire ' ' - The Changing Nature of Elite Sociability
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The main thrust of the monograph is a neglected area of scholarship: that of Ireland’s own lively salon culture in the eighteenth century … . As well as being useful to those working in the fields of elite sociability and women’s education in the eighteenth century, this book also finds a place in the emerging field of ‘four nations studies’, which aims to move scholarship away from the hegemonic dominance of England-focused work in the context of studies of Britain and Ireland.” (Miranda Reading, Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 41 (04), December, 2018)

“Prendergast’s primary aim is to connect the Irish salons of the Romantic period to gatherings in France and England in which theirmembers circulated and whose cultural and literary ambitions they shared. … Prendergast brings an impressive amount of archival research to bear upon the story she tells, and anyone seeking to understand how salon culture crossed the Irish Sea will need to consult this work.” (Eric Gidal, European Romantic Review, Vol. 28 (1), January, 2017)

“Prendergast’s wide-ranging study opens up new venues by considering Anglo-Irish connections especially in the second half of the eighteenth century and by concentrating on salonnières who were often active in England and Ireland. … Prendergast’s study is impressive and highly informative.” (Susanne Schmid, The BARS Review, Issue 49, 2017)

“In this engaging book, Amy Prendergast focuses primarily on the period between 1750 and the 1820s … . this book has much to recommend it. It is a most enjoyable and at times thought-provoking read, whose comparative approach gives it an edge and a freshness while allowing it to advance the historiography of literary salons in Ireland, England and France and pave the way for future research.” (Rachel Wilson, Reviews in History, history.ac.uk, February, 2016)

“Amy Prendergast’s first book, Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland, adds a fascinating insight into the associational relationships of England and Ireland’s cultured elite in the period. … It should stimulate further research into the literary and material history of eighteenth-century Ireland. … In its sensitive recuperation of a past that is neglected and, at times, seemingly deliberately obliterated, Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland will be of interest to Irish historians and literary scholars alike.” (Rebecca Anne Barr, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Vol. 31, 2016)

From the Publisher