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"Eighteenth Century Worlds" (ECW) is a list in which members are invited to write to one another about the period 1660-1830. We read together and discuss the literature, music and art that emerged across Europe in the "long eighteenth century." The noun "worlds" is meant to suggest how many kinds of communities, places, and currents of thought the time span includes. To subscribe click here The list was opened in early November 2001 by Joanne Pope. She was listowner and I was moderator. As with the other list we ran together (Women Writers), in January 2003 she made me listowner and then left the list. Leslie Robertson is now my fellow moderator. The list is now intended to serve the needs and desires of 1) professional scholars in European culture and the enlightenment; and 2) people who enjoy reading about the long 18th century. I ask people who join to introduce themselves and ask all to follow the rules for courtesy (see below). The list originated as a development from a small subgroup which began on EighteenthCenturyNovels, a Yahoo group meant for people to read 18th century novels. On that list there was a reading and group-wide discussion of Boswell's Life of Johnson, followed by Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands and Boswell's A Tour of the
Hebrides. A few of those who had participated in this read felt uncomfortable on that list so we opened our own and continued here with Fanny Burney's
Journals and Letters (see "On Reading Divergent
Fanny Burney d'Arblays"). We then went on to Johnson's Ramblers, Idlers and Adventurers, Johnson's Rasselas, Life of
Savage (and some of us Richard Holmes's Dr Johnson and Mr Savage), Beryl Bainbridge's
According to Queeney and Boswell's London Journal,
1762-63, and Adam Sisman's Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The
Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson  We have now turned this "Johnson's circle" group into a group for reading non-fiction. We have thus far read and discussed The Selected Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, James Clifford's biography, Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale), Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Journal of Walter Scott, as edited by W. E. K. Anderson in the Canongate series, Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Les Reveries du promeneur solitaire (available in Peter France's translation as Reveries of the Solitary Walker for Penguin), Andrew McClellan's Inventing the Louvre, Jonathan Bate's John Clare: A Biography, Goethe's Italian Journey, ed. Thomas P. Saine and Jeffrey L. Sammons, trans. Robert R. Heitner (Yale paperback edition), John Buchan's Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlighenment, Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind, and Elizabeth Grant [Smith]'s Memoirs of a Highland Lady (available in an unabridged paperback Canongate classic, ed., introd. Andrew Tod). People were also invited to read one or other of her other memoirs, The Highland Lady in France, 1843-1845 and The Highland Lady in Ireland (also available in the same Canongate series, with Patria Kelly as a co-editor); our last non-fiction books have been Linda Colley's Captives, and Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself For this spring as an alternative to Crabbe or the plays (for those who finish Crabbe early, or cannot read him or the plays at night), a delightful history of the arts and a brilliant biography, John Brewer's Pleasures of the Imaginagion: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century and Stella Tillyard's Citizen Lord: A Life of Edward Fitzgerald (a sequel to her book on the four Lennox sisters' letters, Aristocrats, about the man at the center of the Irish revolt of 1798): For Sunday,  A second general discussion group has been devoted to all forms of fiction, and this is meant to include poetry and plays. We have thus far read and discussed in a scheduled way Walter Scott's Kenilworth (April-May), Maria Edgeworth's Belinda, Sophia Lee's The Recess, Walter Scott's Old Mortality, Germaine de Stael's Delphine, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu's Persian Letters, and (for a third novel by Scott), Walter Scott's Guy Mannering, Ann Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest, Diderot's La Religieuse (The Nun) and Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew), Charlotte Smith's The Old Manor House, Henry Fielding's Amelia, Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Byron's The Two Foscari, Mary Shelley's The Last Man, Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloise, and Burney's Evelina: or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World and Cecilia, or The Memoirs of an Heiress; Frances Sheridan's Memoirs of Sidney Biddulph and Mary Hays's Memoirs of Emma Courtney, and for two months modern historical novels individually chosen (e.g., Emma Donoghue's Slammerkin), Charles Brockden Brown's gothic Wieland, Mary Brunton's Discipline, Goethe's Elective Affinities and William Cowper's The Task and some of his shorter poems. Starting next year on January 10, 2009, we will have a reading and
discussion of Richardson's Clarissa in real time: that is, we
will follow the calendar in the novel. I've done this once before; this time I hope to discuss with members of the list some of the criticism of the book, and the 1991 film adaptation, Clarissa, directed by Robert Bierman, written by David Nokes & Janet Barron, and produced by Kevin Loader. Then we will go on to read Ian McEwan's Atonement and watch & discuss the 2007 film adaptation diorected by Joe Wright, written by Christopher Hampton, produced by Tim Bevan, Atonement, as it has been suggested by Jocelyn Harris that the Booker Prize nominee alludes to Clarissa and the film is also a free adaptation, (see the allusion to Lovelace's dream of a ferris wheel) of Richardson's novel.   We are now embarked on two alternative threads: some of us are reading through the drama of the era from a few Jacobean, Caroline, and Commonwealth plays through (using anthologies), many of the plays of the Restoration, 18th and early 19thcentury. Thus far we have read from a choice of John Fletcher The Tamer Tamed, James Shirley Hyde Park, and The Lady of Pleasure, Richard Brome The Jovial Crew and The Antipodes; Fletcher Humorous Lieutenant, and Beaumont The Knight of the Burning Pestle; Margaret Cavendish's Bell in Campo, Abraham Cowley's Cutter of Coleman Street or Thomas Killigrew's Parson's Wedding; Fletcher Maid's Tragedy, A Wife for a Month and Shirley The Traitor. For the next few months we are reading from three anthologies: Restoration Comedies, edited by Dennis Davison; Six Restoration Plays edited by John Harold Wilson, and Four Libertine Plays, edited by Deborah Payne Fisk. Here is our schedule: Over the month of February: Etheredge's She Would If She Could; Sedley's The Mulberry Garden (in Davison) We will then try to go through the middle to later 18th and into the early 19th century in drama, using the following anthologies: Eighteenth Century Tragedy, ed. Michael R. Booth; The Beggar's Opera and Other 18th Century Plays, ed. David Lindsay; John Vanbrugh, The Relapse and Other Plays, ed. Brean Hammond; Six Eighteenth Century Plays, ed John Harold Wilson; 18th Century Plays, ed. Ricardo Quintana; Burlesque Plays of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Simon Trussler; English Trader, Indian Maid, Frank Felsenstein; Five Romantic Plays, 1768-1821, ed. Paul Baines and Edward Burns; Four Georgian and Pre-Revolutionary Plays, ed. David Thomas. The above anthologies do not include all the important or entertaining plays we might like to read so as we go along I'll add plays which exist in separate editions (e.g., Steele's Tender Husband, Cibber's Careless Husband, John Gay's Beggar's Opera, Henry Fielding's Modern Husband,Garrick and Colman's The Clandestine Marriage), volumes of plays by good authors we could dwell on (e.g., Van Brugh, Frances Sheridan), when and where we can translations (Isobel Grundy's edition of Wortley Montagu's poetry includes Simplicity, Cornell has produced an edition of Marivaux in translation, Seven Comedies by Marivaux, ed. O. Mandel).  On this track people are invited instead to read (or alongside the plays) for winter into spring 2008 poems by George Crabbe. People can use what texts they want; the following schedule is based on George Crabbe: Tales, 1812, and other selected poems, ed. Howard Mills (Cambridge UP, 1967). So for Sunday,  We also encourage and start threads on books people happen to be reading. I and a few others have written on Maria Edgeworth's Patronage, Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story and Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa, Charlotte Smith's Ethelinde, or the Recluse of the Lake, Louise D'Epinay's Madame de Montbrillant, Francoise de Graffigny's Letters from a Peruvian Woman, Germaine de Stael's Corinne, ou l'Italie and Andrea di Robillant's A Venetian Affair. We have discussed biographies of 18th century people, plays and poetry and shared texts online; we discuss films set in the 18th century. Postings on articles and journals are of interest to this list. I invite members to write about novels, plays, and poetry they have read, are reading or would like to read, or about what was going on between 1660 and 1830 in Europe and elsewhere as they please and talk about their thoughts on list. I enjoy putting on our site images of 18th century art.  Leslie send us biographies from the ODNB. We have a poetry day: Wednesday everyone is invited to send in a favorite 18th century poem (1660-1830). I invite discussion of film adaptations of novels/memoir and history written during this period and 20th century historical fiction set in it. I also do what I can to forward to the list "calls for papers," conferences, and relevant cultural events. I did not continue to list as a place for people simply to read
books together; however, it has become a list where most of the
postings are about what we read on our own or in a group.
Nonetheless, the goal of the list is to be a community of people exploring and discussing the long eighteenth century, with particular attention to the milieu of the later 17th century century, Enlightenment values, the growth of a literary marketplace and modern world (which includes the invention of new genres like the novel and forms of autobiography), and the Romantic movement and French revolution.  A Few Rules to ensure CourtesyIn order to prevent discomfort, hurt feelings, trolling, flame wars and other disruptions on our list, to secure acourteous and cordial atmosphere, and to ensure that this list remains a place where serious scholarly talk predominates, as listowner I ask everyone to read and to abide by the following explicit rules:
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