The Game Of Love In Georgian England

Courtship in Georgian England was a decisive moment in the life cycle, imagined as a tactical game, an invigorating sport, and a perilous journey across a turbulent sea. This volume brings to life the emotional experience of courtship using the words and objects selected by men and women to navigate this potentially fraught process. It provides new insights into the making and breaking of relationships, beginning with the formation of courtships using the language of love, the development of intimacy through the exchange of love letters, and sensory engagement with love tokens such as flowers, portrait miniatures, and locks of hair. It also charts the increasing modernization of romantic customs over the Georgian era - most notably with the arrival of the printed valentine's card - revealing how love developed into a commercial industry. The book concludes with the rituals of disintegration when engagements went awry, and pursuit of damages for breach of promise in the civil courts. The Game of Love in Georgian England brings together love letters, diaries, valentines, and proposals of marriage from sixty courtships sourced from thirty archives and museum collections, alongside an extensive range of sources including ballads, conduct literature, court cases, material objects, newspaper reports, novels, periodicals, philosophical discourses, plays, poems, and prints, to create a vivid social and cultural history of romantic emotions. The book demonstrates the importance of courtship to studies of marriage, relationships, and emotions in history, and how we write histories of emotions using objects. Love emerges as something that we do in practice, enacted by couples through particular socially and historically determined rituals.

For the notorious Lady Winter, seduction and duplicity are required to survive. Cunning and precision are the tools of pirate Christopher St. John. Pitted against one another, they are a surprise waiting to happen.

Courtship in Georgian England was a decisive moment in the life cycle, imagined as a tactical game, an invigorating sport, and a perilous journey across a turbulent sea. This volume brings to life the emotional experience of courtship using the words and objects selected by men and women to navigate this potentially fraught process. It provides new insights into the making and breaking of relationships, beginning with the formation of courtships using the language of love, the development of intimacy through the exchange of love letters, and sensory engagement with love tokens such as flowers, portrait miniatures, and locks of hair. It also charts the increasing modernization of romantic customs over the Georgian era - most notably with the arrival of the printed valentine's card - revealing how love developed into a commercial industry. The book concludes with the rituals of disintegration when engagements went awry, and pursuit of damages for breach of promise in the civil courts. The Game of Love in Georgian England brings together love letters, diaries, valentines, and proposals of marriage from sixty courtships sourced from thirty archives and museum collections, alongside an extensive range of sources including ballads, conduct literature, court cases, material objects, newspaper reports, novels, periodicals, philosophical discourses, plays, poems, and prints, to create a vivid social and cultural history of romantic emotions. The book demonstrates the importance of courtship to studies of marriage, relationships, and emotions in history, and how we write histories of emotions using objects. Love emerges as something that we do in practice, enacted by couples through particular socially and historically determined rituals.

This interdisciplinary essay collection investigates the various interactions of people, feelings, and things throughout premodern Europe. It focuses on the period before mass production, when limited literacy often prioritised material methods of communication. The subject of materiality has been of increasing significance in recent historical inquiry, alongside growing emphasis on the relationships between objects, emotions, and affect in archaeological and sociological research. The historical intersections between materiality and emotions, however, have remained under-theorised, particularly with respect to artefacts that have continuing resonance over extended periods of time or across cultural and geographical space. Feeling Things addresses the need to develop an appropriate cross-disciplinary theoretical framework for the analysis of objects and emotions in European history, with special attention to the need to track the shifting emotional valencies of objects from the past to the present, and from one place and cultural context to another. The collection draws together an international group of historians, art historians, curators, and literary scholars working on a variety of cultural, literary, visual, and material sources. Objects considered include books, letters, prosthetics, religious relics, shoes, stone, and textiles. Many of these have been preserved in international galleries, museums, and archives, while others have remained in their original locations, even as their contexts have changed over time. The chapters consider the ways in which emotions such as despair, fear, grief, hope, love, and wonder become inscribed in and ascribed to these items, producing 'emotional objects' of significance and agency. Such objects can be harnessed to create, affirm, or express individual relationships, as, for example, in religious devotion and practice, or in the construction of cultural, communal, and national identities.

Good Society is a tabletop roleplaying game where you create an Austen novel with your friends.

"Lee brings the atmosphere of the Georgian era to life with lush descriptions that beg the reader to see, hear, feel and touch it all."—RT Book Reviews She is the ultimate gamble...And he'll risk everything on a toss of the dice Beautiful young widow Susannah, Lady Messingham, refuses to belong to any man again. Until she inadvertently draws handsome Lord Philip Drake into an exhilarating game of terrifying stakes and unimaginable rewards. Philip is a seasoned gambler who knows all the tricks and isn't afraid to use them. He'd do anything for Susannah, including sacrificing his honor and his freedom. Praise for The Highest Stakes: "A sweeping tale of romance, betrayal, intrigue, and the power of true love." - RT Book Reviews "Compelling...Allow yourself to be transported." - The Racing Journal "Brava to Ms. Lee on a brilliant first novel. Well-rounded characters, excellent research, realistic dialogue, and a unique plot." - Romance Reviews Today "Lee writes beautifully and passionately ... the plot moves at a rapid clip with extraordinary twists and turns, leaving the reader wanting to know more." - Rundpinne

"The Georgian Art of Gambling" takes the reader on a miscellaneous tour through high and low society to reveal all aspects of gambling in the Georgian era. Descriptions of the most fashionable card and dice games of the day are interspersed with snippets of contemporary anti-gambling pamphlets, descriptions of the most famous (and degenerate) gambling houses, and accounts of the ruination of many high-profile aristocrats. "The Georgian Art of Gambling" covers wagering on sports such as cockfighting, bull baiting, boxing and cricket to the more sedentary pleasures of the card table. Both the civilised (card games portrayed in the novels of Jane Austen) and the debauched (card sharps and loaded dice) are explored, offering the reader a fascinating glimpse into the extent of gambling in Georgian Britain.

One of today's best-loved authors, Judith McNaught launched her stellar career with this dazzling bestseller. Now in a special edition that features a brand-new, enhanced ending and endows familiar characters with new depth, Whitney, My Love lives on as "the ultimate love story, one you can dream about forever" (Romantic Times). Under the dark, languorous eyes of Clayton Westmoreland, the Duke of Claymore, Whitney Stone grew from a saucy hoyden into a ravishingly sensual woman. Fresh from her triumphs in Paris society, she returned to England to win the heart of Paul, her childhood love...only to be bargained away by her bankrupt father to the handsome, arrogant Duke. Outraged, she defies her new lord. But even as his smoldering passion seduces her into a gathering storm of desire, Whitney cannot -- will not -- relinquish her dream of perfect love. Rich with emotion, brimming with laughter and tears, Whitney, My Love confirms once more why "Judith McNaught is truly one of the spellbinding storytellers of our times" (Affaire de Coeur).