British Literary Salons of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries [Hardcover]

British salons, with guests such as Byron, Moore, and Thackeray, were veritable hothouses of political and cultural agitation. Using a number of sources - diaries, letters, silver-fork novels, satires, travel writing, Keepsakes, and imaginary conversations - Schmid paints a vivid picture of the British salon between the 1780s and the 1840s.1. Traditions and Theories 2. Mary Berry and Her British Spaces 3. Mary Berry as a Learned Woman: Out of the Closet 4. Holland House and Lady Holland 5. The Holland House Set 6. The Countess of Blessington as Hostess 7. The Countess of Blessington as Writer and Editor

Schmids book offers itself as a substantial contribution to this ever-expanding area of research. & Besides providing cultural-historical contextualization, Schmids introduction illustrates several terminological and theoretical points such as the notions of the non-place, social sphere and performativity. & the book presents a clear structure based on the arguments and theoretical premisses laid out in the introduction. (Diego Saglia, The BARS Review, Vol. 47, Spring, 2016)

Susanne Schmid displays a very different form of community in her scholarly British Literary Salons of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, which constitutes a piece of highly impressive archival research. & This is an impressive body of research, which opens a new sphere within Romantic metropolitan and cosmopolitan culture. (The Years Work in English Studies, Vol. 94, 2015)

Schmid's highly readable work will be of interest to scholars of cultural history, literature, and gender studies alike. It brings together an impressive range of ideas, based on close analyses of rich seams of archival material, as well as hitherto overlooked non-canonical literature, to present a vibrant account of how British women actively harnessed the potential of the salon as a social institution to engage in the political, intellectual, and culturlã3