A polite and commercial people

Conventional views of the eighteenth century emphasize its political stability, aristocratic government, stately manners, and Georgian elegance. Professor Langford, however, also brings to life a less orderly world of treasonable plots, rioting mobs, and Hogarthian vulgarity. Using the latest research, and a wealth of original sources, often generously quoted, he tells a highly readable tale of remarkable contrast and changes. Pitt, Fox and Walpole rub shoulders with Dr Johnson, Pope and Fielding. This books shows the vitality and variety of an age often seen in static terms. This was, above all, a period of rapid commercial growth and burgeoning bourgeois pretensions. Many characteristic features of eighteenth-century life were the result. They included military success and imperial expansion, political maturation and economic development, cultural confidence and polite manners. But there were also tensions and contradictions. Evangelical enthusiasm jostled with scientific rationalism, oligarchical politics with popular insubordination, entrepreneurial opulence with plebeian poverty, sentimentality with utilitarian reform. Professor Langford examines all these features and explains the way they relate to each other. He demonstrates that this was a society constantly being stretched by change, and perpetually responding to its challenge.