Virtue In Humble Life Containing Reflections On The Reciprocal Duties Of The Wealthy And Indigent Thoughts On The Various Situations Passions And Virtues Of Mankind Fables Anecdotes A Manual Of Devotion Comprehending Extracts From Eminent Poets

How did the penitentiary get its name? Why did the English impose long prison sentences? Did class and economic conflict really lie at the heart of their correctional system? In a groundbreaking study that challenges the assumptions of modern criminal justice scholarship, Laurie Throness answers many questions like these by exposing the deep theological roots of the judicial institutions of eighteenth-century Britain. The book offers a scholarly account of the passage of the Penitentiary Act of 1779, combining meticulous attention to detail with a sweeping theological overview of the century prior to the Act. But it is not just an intellectual history. It tells a fascinating story of a broader religious movement, and the people and beliefs that motivated them to create a new institution. The work is original because it relies so completely on original sources. It is mystical because it mingles heavenly with earthly justice. It is authoritative because of its explanatory power. Its anecdotes and insights, poetry and song, provide intriguing glimpses into another era strangely familiar to our own. Of special interest to social and legal historians, criminologists, and theologians, this work will also appeal to a wider audience of those who are interested in Christianity's impact on Western culture and institutions.

This book argues that the Seven Years' War (1756-63) produced an intense historical consciousness within British cultural life regarding the boundaries of belonging to community, family and nation. Global warfare prompts a radical re-imagining of the state and the subjectivities of those who inhabit it. Laurence Sterne's distinctive writing provides a remarkable route through the transformations of mid-eighteenth-century British culture. The risks of war generate unexpected freedoms and crises in the making of domestic imperial subjects, which will continue to reverberate in anti-slavery struggles and colonial conflict from America to India. The book concentrates on the period from the 1750s to the 1770s. It explores the work of Johnson, Goldsmith, Walpole, Burke, Scott, Wheatley, Sancho, Smollett, Rousseau, Collier, Smith and Wollstonecraft alongside Sterne's narratives. It incorporates debates among moral philosophers and philanthropists, examines political tracts, poetry and grammar exercises, and paintings by Kauffman, Hayman, and Wright of Derby, tracking the investments in, and resistances to, the cultural work of empire.Key Features* Topical in its focus on the making of 'modern' subjectivity during the first 'global war'* Path-breaking in advancing our understanding of the cultural history of eighteenth-century Britain* Timely in its combination of new historical research with a critical engagement with debates in postcolonial and subaltern studies* Original in its account of the literature of the Seven Years' War and its outstanding analysis of the writing of Laurence Sterne