Rule Britannia Britain And Britishness 1707 1901

The concept of Britishness – and its constituent facets – has, over the past decade, come increasingly to the fore. In particular, this can be seen in the politically and socially engaging debates surrounding the Scottish Referendum in 2014. It is an idea – manifested both physically and cognitively – that every Briton is aware of and engages with to a greater or lesser extent. Thus, the concept of Britishness is extremely current and crosses cultural, political and socio-economic boundaries. Nevertheless, Britishness is a challenging term to define and explore, given its tremendously wide-ranging nature and dynamic, personally shaped characteristics. Considering historical ideas of Britishness, however, can enhance the understanding of national identity in the modern world. This volume does just that by gathering together original academic essays that explore the expression and understanding of Britishness in literature, philosophy, music, historical documents, art and design. Each contribution offers a detailed investigation of primary material, including architecture, furniture, historical literature, plays and sermons, and marketing. As a collection, ideas are marshalled to reveal a rich tapestry of Britishness and its forging.

Extending the scholarly discussion of visual history, this book examines eighteenth-century engraved book illustrations in order to outline the genealogy of the modern visualisation of the past in Britain. This study is based on a body of more than a hundred engraved historical plates designed in the second half of the eighteenth century in Britain and published in more than a dozen pictorial histories. Focusing on these previously unstudied engravings, this work contributes to the study of eighteenth-century visual culture and is informed by current interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of visual and book studies. Eighteenth-Century Engravings and Visual History in Britain is about the urge to envision the past and about the establishment of the new relationship between visual media, visuality, and history in eighteenth-century Britain. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, British history, book studies, and visual culture.

"This volume considers how ideas were made visible through the making of art and visual experiences occasioned by reception during the long eighteenth century. Contributors consider the approach taken by individual artists and the material formation of concepts in different contexts by asking new questions of artworks that are implicated by the need to see ideas in painted, sculpted, illustrated, designed, and built forms. The first four essays work with ideas about material objects and identity formation, while the last four essays address the intellectual work that can be expressed through or performed by objects. Making Ideas Visible in the Eighteenth Century thus introduces new visual materials and novel conceptual models into traditional accounts of the intellectual history of the Enlightenment."--Cover page 4.

The Henry VII and Elizabeth of York marriage bed, rediscovered in 2010, is an exceptional piece of late medieval English royal furniture: no other equivalent example of secular domestic furniture is known to have survived, and, indeed, precious little woodwork from this period remains outside of ecclesiastical settings. As a tour-de-force of medieval royal woodwork, the bed offers an unprecedented insight into elite domestic furniture from this period. Since its rediscovery, the bed has been subjected to a wide array of investigation by furniture specialists, medieval historians, design historians and scientists. Emerging from a decade-long multidisciplinary research project, this book is the first sustained account of the bed: it shows how numerous disciplines covering the arts and conservation sciences can be brought together to assess and interpret such rare historic survivals. Broken down into thematic chapters, the book explores the bed’s form and structure, context, iconography, wood, paint, physical history, provenance - including its curious reproduction by George Shaw in Victorian England - and relationship with known surviving Tudor furniture, as well as Georgian and Victorian Gothic Revival beds. Although thought to be a nineteenth-century fake, this book presents historical, archival and scientific evidence to show, beyond doubt, the bed’s late medieval age. While grounded upon research presented at a 2019 conference funded by the Institute of Conservation and held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the book incorporates additional historical and scientific discoveries made since the conference. Written by a range of scientists, historians and specialist researchers, this volume is a multi-disciplinary work of immeasurable value to readers from numerous disciplines.

The 18th century saw the height of court culture in Europe as well as the beginnings of its demise with conflicts such as the American and French Revolutions. The Scientific Revolution, which had begun in the preceding centuries, also ushered in a new intellectual era which advocated the use of reason to effect change in government and to advance progress in society. For furniture, this meant ever-higher standards of luxury in the designs, techniques and materials utilized for the best pieces, and more structure and specialization in the furniture-making process itself. Furniture also came into its own during this period as a collectable work of art on its own merits. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, this volume presents essays that examine key characteristics of the furniture of the period on the themes of Design and Motifs; Makers, Making, and Materials; Types and Uses; The Domestic Setting; The Public Setting; Exhibition and Display; Furniture and Architecture; Visual Representations; and Verbal Representations.

Conclusion -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- Glossary -- Index

In essays that are “entertaining and, at times, fascinating” The 1805 Club’s journal examines how art, literature, and film portray the Georgian Navy (Pirates and Privateers). The Trafalgar Chronicle is a prime source of information as well as the publication of choice for new research about the Georgian Navy, sometimes also loosely referred to as ‘Nelson’s Navy’, though its scope reaches out to include all the sailing navies of the period. In this 2020 issue, the feature article, by Gerald Stulc, MD, analyzes film depictions and portraits of Horatio Nelson, throughout his service and after his death, comparing these images to the clinical realities of Nelson’s injuries in battle. Additional theme-related contributions include the story behind the most famous paintings of Nelson’s death; how Tobias Smollet wrote a novel revealing the unhygienic and inhumane medical care aboard Royal Navy ships of the day; the rise of the fouled anchor motif; modern-day naval historical fiction portrayals of women in the era of Nelson; and whimsical drawings of Nelson in caricature and cartoon. In the tradition of recent editions of The Trafalgar Chronicle, this issue contains biographical sketches of Royal Navy contemporaries of Nelson including Sir Andrew Pellet Green, Commander James Pearl, Captain John Houghton Marshall, and Captain Ralph Willet Miller, and Sir Home Popham. Each made a unique contribution to Britain’s victories at sea. Of more general interest to readers, the 2020 issue provides articles about the role of Spain in the American Revolution, new revelations about Cornwallis’ children that he fathered while stationed in the Caribbean, and how the American War for Independence influenced Royal Navy operations in the War of 1812.