The Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England [Hardcover]

The Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England analyzes the long overlooked role of gift exchange in literary texts and cultural documents and provides innovative readings of how gift transactions shaped the institutions and practices that gave this era its distinctive identity.PART I: THEORIES OF BENEVOLENCE Rights and Reciprocity in the Political and Philosophical Discourse of Eighteenth-Century England; A.Moltchanova ?& S.Ottaway Charity Education and the Spectacle of 'Christian Entertainment'; J.Smith Debt without Redemption in a World of 'Impossible Exchange': Samuel Richardson and Philanthropy; J.A.Dussinger PART II: CONDUCT AND THE GIFT 'Tis Better to Give: The?Conduct Manual as?Gift; M.Francus The?Gift of an Education: Sarah Trimmer's Oeconomy of Charity and the Sunday School Movement; D.Williams Elliott PART III: THE EROTICS OF THE GIFT Obligation, Coercion, and Economy: The Deed of Trust in Congreve's The Way of the World; C.Klekar The Erotics of the Gift: Gender and Exchange in the Eighteenth-Century Novel; C.Haskell Hinnant Fictions of the Gift in Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall; J.Batchelor The Nation, the Gift, and the Market in The Wanderer; L.Zionkowski PART IV: THE GIFT AND COMMERCE Josiah?Wedgewood's Goodwill Marketing; S.B.Egenolf Anson at?Canton, 1743: Obligation, Exchange, and Ritual in Edward Page's Secret History; R.Markley

An exceptionally rich collection, unusually well focused and well organized. Its title belies the breadth of the issues under examination, for the gift ultimately subsumes issues as diverse as poverty, charity, benevolence, sensibility, conduct, poor relief, and the emergence of the welfare state. Because such issues are usually owned by nineteenth-century studies (from the early labor history of the Hammonds up to Gertrude Himmelfarb), it is refreshing to see them pushed back into the eighteenth century. The essays draw on the rich tradition of theorists of the gift, from Mauss, Irigaray, Bourdieu, Cixous,lC´