Eighteenth Century Archives | Page 2 of 3

A Continent of Great Extent: Writing To The Fair Land

Some of you may remember Pythagoras and his theorem from maths lessons at school – and if like me you weren’t keen on maths, then I’m sure he didn’t endear …

The Bristol Boys: The Bare Knuckle Champions and The Hatchet Inn

The Hatchet Inn on Frogmore Street in Bristol is all that remains of a row of seventeenth-century timbered houses dating back to 1606 – making it one of the city’s …

Fiction and the Historical Female

I’m delighted to welcome Helen Hollick, author of the fabulous Sea Witch Voyages series (pirates! white witches! adventure on the high seas!) onto the blog today. Helen discusses how she …

Cribb’s Parlour: Tom Cribb

I’m an inveterate English Heritage blue-plaque spotter – and if I’d missed this one in Panton Street, Haymarket, London, the pub sign would have been enough to tell me that …

The Royale, Bush Theatre, London

When men campaigning for parliamentary reform in the eighteenth century planned to hold public meetings in defiance of government attempts to silence them, they were warned that they would be …

Harriette Wilson and John Murray: Surviving the Brutal Rejection

In July I wrote a blog about bad reviews and how they have always been an occupational hazard for writers. (July 2014, Dismal Trash: The Time-Honoured Art of the Bad …

Dismal Trash: The Time-Honoured Art of the Bad Review

Every writer knows they run the risk of receiving a bad review. Often the temptation to answer back is strong. The accepted advice is “don’t”, and I think this is …

The Female Writer’s Apology; Or, Then and Now

In my eighteenth-century thriller, To The Fair Land, Ben Dearlove’s adventures start when he tries to find the anonymous author of a book about a voyage to the South Seas. …

Georgians Revealed?

I recently went to the British Library’s exhibition “Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain”. By tracing similarities between our modern lifestyle and that of the era …

‘We will have a fire’: arson during eighteenth-century enclosures

“Inclosure came and trampled on the grave Of labours rights and left the poor a slave And memorys pride ere want to wealth did bow Is both the shadow and …

That infernal brothel: the story of Bet Carter (c1770 – ?), a convict to New South Wales

At the end of April 1794 The Surprize convict ship set sail from Portsmouth bound for Botany Bay. Her master was Patrick Campbell and the first mate was Mr McPherson. …

Late an Officer in the British Navy

One of the voyage accounts I read while writing my novel To the Fair Land was The Adventures of Mark Moore: late an officer in the British Navy (1795).* Moore combined …