https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4498-9231
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Katrina Navickas, Mark Philp. Radical Conduct: Politics, Sociability and Equality in London, 1789–1815., The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 1, March 2023, Pages 456–457, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad015
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Extract
The political worlds of eighteenth-century Britain were associational and sociable. They were based around who knew whom, in what social circles, and how those groups interacted and debated ideas. In the later eighteenth century, as revolutions swept the empire and Europe, a radical sociability was fostered in London, bringing together thinkers and writers on alternative modes of government and society.
Mark Philp’s new book, Radical Conduct: Politics, Sociability and Equality in London, 1789–1815, raises some vital questions about the role of sociability in the politics of this period. It is grounded, as much of Philp’s previous work is, in the most influential family in the alternative political world in London, that of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and their associates, including Mary Hays, Thomas Holcroft, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Amelia Alderson. But moving on from his prior focus on Godwin’s political thought, Philp examines the bounds of the social “circle” itself. How many people was it possible to know well in an expanding metropolis? What was the role of trust and betrayal? To what extent was it possible for radical groups, particularly bourgeois and privileged ones, to interact on equal terms and “spread” ideas?
