Penelope J. Corfield is a historian, lecturer and education consultant. She currently serves as the President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS).
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MONTHLY BLOG 149, Tracking Down The Fugitive History of the Body Louse
/in History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldEighteenth-century Britons knew all about body lice. But – the subject was rarely mentioned. It was not just polite company that avoided any reference; but people in the wider society too. Body lice – those tiny human parasites – were well known as itchy, infernal nuisances…
MONTHLY BLOG 148, Tracking down Eighteenth-Century Optimists and Pessimists in order to write The Georgians
/in History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldMany people have asked, since the publication of my book on The Georgians1 , why I note on the dust-cover that I am an optimist. There is a reason (apart from the fact that it’s true). But to explain, I need to take a step back. So please bear with me while I tell you first about how I decided to introduce my cast of eighteenth-century Britons…
MONTHLY BLOG 147, A Great Painted Tribute to an Eighteenth-Century Cultural Ambassador between Global East & West
/in Civics, History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldAs British sailors and explorers increasingly travelled the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so the public back home clamoured to read all about it. Fictional fantasias like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) became instant best-sellers…
MONTHLY BLOG 146, Towards Democracy: The Significance of Britain’s Eighteenth-Century Electorate
/in Current Affairs, History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldDemocracy is not a flawless form of government. Nor do all democracies survive for all time. Nonetheless, representative democracies uphold the ideal notion of a rational politics, in which all citizens have an equal vote – all exercise their judgment in choosing representatives, who in turn vote to run the country on behalf of their fellow citizens – and all calmly accept the outcome of a majority vote…
MONTHLY BLOG 145, Being a Citizen whilst Living under a Hereditary Monarchy
/in Civics, History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIt was infuriating twice over: firstly, to be informed by a contributor to the New York Review of Books that the British people are ‘subjects, not citizens’;1 and, secondly, to realise that my protesting Letter to the Editor, sent twice in case it went astray first time round, is not going to be published in the NYRB columns…
MONTHLY BLOG 144, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 12: Celebrating the annual late-November Jonathan Swift Festival in the City of Dublin, where the Anglo-Irish wit, satirist and cleric was born and where he served as Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral from 1713 to 1745.
/in History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldWhere does humour come from? It’s a great question to ask, when contemplating the life and times of the twelfth hero in my year of Georgian commemorations. The Anglo-Irish Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was an exceptionally sharp and witty man. Many jokes and wisecracks in circulation throughout the eighteenth century turn out, upon close inspection, to have derived from Swift.
MONTHLY BLOG 143, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 11: Celebrating annual Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement, given annually, from mid-November 1952 onwards, to best performer on Chicago stage
/in History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldThe Chicago acting award for successful women on stage, named after the celebrated Georgian thespian Sarah Siddons (1755-1831),1 had a most unusual start in life. Over two hundred years had passed without any special move to celebrate her undoubted achievements….
MONTHLY BLOG 142, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 10: Annual Commemorations UK ANTI-SLAVERY DAY ON 18 OCTOBER & THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH EQUIANO (c.1745-97)
/in Current Affairs, History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldGeorgian Britain is known for its historic participation in the transportation of captive Africans from their homeland to the New World. There the involuntary migrants were detained as slaves. Set to work in the sugar plantations, they were viewed by their ‘masters’ as an ultra-cheap labour-force …
MONTHLY BLOG 141, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 9: Annual Commemorations of the Battle of Trafalgar & the Death of Nelson
/in History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldTrafalgar! Most Britons know the name. They don’t all know the date of the famous naval battle on 21 October 1805. Or its location, offshore from Cape Trafalgar, on the Atlantic coast of southern Spain – close to the nautical approach into the Straits of Gibraltar. Above all, however, most Britons do know that the British fleet won a famous victory…
MONTHLY BLOG 140, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 8: Annual Memorial Service at Bristol’s Arnos Vale Cemetery, to celebrate the life of India’s remarkable religious, social & educational reformer, Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833)
/in History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldEighteenth-century Britain witnessed a veritable ferment of ideas. Religious reformers and traditionalists within Christianity battled with one another, whilst religious sceptics, known as ‘freethinkers’, argued against all forms of revealed religion. It was a time for rethinking and renewal; and not just in Britain…