Based on wide-ranging, original research into political, personal, and general correspondences across a period of significant social and political change, this book explores the gendered nature of politics and political life in eighteenth-century England by focusing on the political involvement of female members of the political elite. Chalus argues that the personal, social, and particularly the familial nature of eighteenth-century politics provided more women with a wider variety of opportunities for involvement than ever before.

Placing women s experiences in the context of the major social, economic and cultural shifts that accompanied the industrial and commercial transformations of this period, Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus paint a fascinating picture of the change, revolution, and continuity that were encountered by women of this time.

A thorough and well-balanced selection of individual chapters by leading field experts and dynamic new scholars, combine original research with a discussion of current secondary literature, and the contributors examine areas as diverse as the Enlightenment, politics,...

This volume provides a wide-ranging, thematic survey of women's history in Britain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Chapters written by both well-established writers and new and dynamic scholars are presented in a thorough and well-balanced selection. Topics covered include women's roles in and experiences of politics, religion, consumption, crime, and many other areas.
This overview of women in the eighteenth century is essential reading for any student of women's history.

Focusing on the transition from the modern to the early modern periods, this volume explores the role of gender in shaping the development of the European town. It examines how gender is both embedded in the built environment and reflected in the way that the built environment is experienced and used, in patterns of residence and movement, in the provision and consumption of services and consumer goods, in the nature of street culture and the diversity of the social arena, and in the shifting boundaries between the public and the private, the social and the political.