Sympathetic and restrained... [Boulukos] does a great service in bringing an almost entirely unknown text to life, and allowing a very particular 18th-century voice—unpolished, unmannerly, thoroughly impolite—to speak.
Once every generation a new text, recovered from obscurity, challenges how we think about the received wisdom that defines multiple fields of inquiry. George E. Boulukos’s ground-breaking edition of Memoirs on the Life and Travels of Thomas Hammond, 1748-1775 is precisely such a text. Hammond was a stableboy, a jockey, a trick rider, a showman, and perhaps above all a writer; but all of these identities were undertaken in service, and thus one would be hard pressed to point to a more complex and exhaustive account of eighteenth-century laboring-class life. Earthy, sometimes violent, often hilarious, always direct, Hammond guides his readers through the race meetings of Newmarket and Odsey before taking them on one of the strangest tours of Europe that one is ever likely to read. The fascinating illustrations that Hammond included with his memoir have been beautifully reproduced, and the text has been lovingly edited. Boulukos’s introduction situates Hammond’s writings, and his annotations elucidate previously obscure subcultures, but everything is handled so that Hammond’s hugely entertaining voice remains front and center. A singular, revelatory edition.
Hammond led a fascinatingly diverse life, and his memoirs will add a great deal to our understanding of eighteenth-century status systems, the life experience of the non-elite, the fields of early modern entertainment and sport, and how national and religious differences and boundaries were experienced by an individual who had not only to encounter them but to incorporate them into his own life.
"Hammond led a fascinatingly diverse life, and his memoirs will add a great deal to our understanding of eighteenth-century status systems, the life experience of the non-elite, the fields of early modern entertainment and sport, and how national and religious differences and boundaries were experienced by an individual who had not only to encounter them but to incorporate them into his own life. "—Kristina Straub, Carnegie Mellon University, author of Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century Britain
"Once every generation a new text, recovered from obscurity, challenges how we think about the received wisdom that defines multiple fields of inquiry. George E. Boulukos’s ground-breaking edition of Memoirs on the Life and Travels of Thomas Hammond, 1748-1775 is precisely such a text. Hammond was a stableboy, a jockey, a trick rider, a showman, and perhaps above all a writer; but all of these identities were undertaken in service, and thus one would be hard pressed to point to a more complex and exhaustive account of eighteenth-century laboring-class life. Earthy, sometimes violent, often hilarious, always direct, Hammond guides his readers through the race meetings of Newmarket and Odsey before taking them on one of the strangest tours of Europe that one is ever likely to read. The fascinating illustrations that Hammond included with his memoir have been beautifully reproduced, and the text has been lovingly edited. Boulukos’s introduction situates Hammond’s writings, and his annotations elucidate previously obscure subcultures, but everything is handled so that Hammond’s hugely entertaining voice remains front and center. A singular, revelatory edition. "—Daniel O'Quinn, University of Guelph, author of Entertaining Crisis in the Atlantic Imperium, 1770-1790
"Sympathetic and restrained... [Boulukos] does a great service in bringing an almost entirely unknown text to life, and allowing a very particular 18th-century voice—unpolished, unmannerly, thoroughly impolite—to speak. "—author of London Review of Books
