The thesis sets out to explain the presence of women writers in the book market of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In order to do so, it examines the position of women writers in Germany - in the context both of their discursive and of their social reality. The thesis investigates the ideological and material background for women's writing, by exploring the areas of gender ideology, contemporary concepts of authorship, women's reading, and the literary market. The final chapter examines women's freedom of expression in different public circumstances. The thesis argues that women's position in the business of culture in general and literature in particular is not as unpromising as has often been claimed. By investigating less well-known texts on gender roles, such as eighteenth-century journal articles, it is possible to show that the rhetoric of prohibitions, for example regarding women's reading and writing, was by no means uniform, but fragmentary and frequently contradictory. Women's own responses to the conditions under which they were working are highlighted throughout the thesis, and examined on the basis of a range of texts, including unpublished correspondence. The examination of non-literary factors, such as the expansion of the literary market and the emergence of a newly diverse reading public, enables the identification of causes other than gender as determining women's position as writers during this period. In the course of this study, numerous neglected texts are considered, which broaden our understanding of this period of literature. The creative and successful use which women writers made of the opportunities they were afforded is emphasised throughout, thereby making an important contribution to the study of women writers.

There has been little interest in eighteenth century urban history in England and particularly in the significance of patterns of urban social structure during the transition from a traditional to a modern society. One reason for this is the intractable and fragmentary nature of the sources for this precensus period. In this study three types of source, a town directory, a Parliamentary Poll Book and the city rate and national tax returns for Bristol in 1774/5, were collated using nominal record linkage techniques to give a body of information which covered 80% of the city's heads of household. With the use of this database and various computer techniques occupation, sex, wealth, place of residence and voting allegiance were analysed. The results suggest that a professional or leisured suburban group was by this date well established in distinct areas of the city. The supremacy of the traditional élite, the overseas merchants, was challenged by this group, although the merchants themselves were in part joining the suburban dwellers. Poorer Bristolians still concentrated in dockside parishes and in parts of the city which were becoming increasingly unfashionable and homogeneous as the richer men moved out, though this process was not very far advanced and there was still a degree of mixing in the older city parishes. The economic structure of the city was changing with increased emphasis on services, professions and distribution. This increased disparities in wealth within the city and between the city and its hinterland and gave the ability to the rich to further their isolation from the poor by moving to the suburbs. The 1774 election pointed to the continuing importance of traditional influences (here of religion) In society, but also confirmed suggestions that the professions and distributors were drawing away from the mass of the populace. A revision of previous interpretations of the nature of Bristol society is necessary to accommodate this growing and important group - the emergent middle class. The thesis shows that a comprehensive computer-based study can make usable dubious sources (in particular fiscal records) and use them to revise interpretations of English urban communities at this date.

This thesis addresses three aspects of the relationship between audience, playhouse and play in Restoration theatre from 1660 to 1710. It provides a comprehensive account of the composition of the Restoration audience, an examination of the effect this group of men and women had upon the plays they attended and an account of the ways in which the plays and playhouses of the Restoration touched the lives of London's inhabitants. In the first part of this dissertation I identify the audience. Chapter 1 deals with London's playhouses, their location, archictecture and decoration. It shows how the playhouses effectively created two sets of spectators: the visible and the invisible audience. Chapter 2 is a detailed examination of those audiences, and the social and occupational groupings to which they belonged. Chapter 3 deals with the support the stage received. It analyses attendance patterns, summarizes evidence of audience size, presents case studies of attendance patterns and outlines the incidence and effects of recurrent playgoing. In the second part of the dissertation I deal with theatricality, with the representation of human action on and off the stage. I examine the audience's behaviour in the playhouses and the other public places of London. I focus on the relationships between stage and street to show how values and attitudes were transmitted between those two realms. To do this, I analyse three components of theatrical behaviour--acting, costume, and stage dialogue and look at their effect on peoples' behaviour in and ideas about the social world. Chapter 4 is an introduction to late seventeenth century ideas of theatricality. Chapter 5 examines contemporary ideas of dress and fashion and of their relationship to stage costuming. Chapter 6 considers how contemporary ideas about conversation and criticism affected and were in turn affected by stage dialogue.

The following study is an examination of the deluded heroine in the novel between 1740 and 1820. Through close readings of fiction by Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Frances Burney, Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen, and discussion of relevant works by other authors of the period, the reasons for the prevalence of this figure are considered. The thesis proposes that this choice of protagonist enabled the exploration of a number of the issues that most concerned contemporary novelists. Principal amongst these was the question of identification between reader and literary protagonist. Throughout this period authors engaged in attempts to develop and control the audience's response. The desired end was the "improvement" of readers by the experience of the situations, mistakes and trials of the text's central characters. Increasingly though, the unpredictable and fluctuating nature of the readers' reactions was recognised. The result was a conflict between "text as instruction", the moral education that authors professed to offer, and "text as fiction", the attractions of story, adventure and imagination which were ostensibly valued only as they brought readers to works intended to improve them. The connection of the latter to romance was a further source of tension. The establishment of the novel as a model for life was premised on claims to probability, but aspects of the texts remained which worked against mimetic representation. These oppositions explain the contemporary popularity of the quixotic narrative, since the quixote both enacted the "madness" of excessive imaginative involvement with literature and could also be shown learning to make a "correct" choice of genre for reading. The strategies that can be observed within the quixote novel have a wider application when they are considered alongside the patterns of imitation, influence and parody which characterise the fiction of the period. In order to examine these features, the thesis includes an analysis of two important literary dialogues: those between Richardson and Lennox, and between Radcliffe and Austen. My focus on the heroine acknowledges the significance of gender in the period's fiction. Created by both female and male authors, such figures could be either exemplary models or quixotic warnings. They nevertheless share an experience of delusion followed by enlightenment constructed in order to benefit the "reading Misses" following their adventures. Unlike much recent criticism, however, my concern is more with the author as creative artist, text as literary process and reader as imaginative participant, than with historical or sociological contexts.

The British market has until now received little of the credit due it as the chief support of the cotton industry during the final fifty years of the eighteenth century. The manner in which this support was extended involved a restructuring of the economy, as illustrated by a qualitative change in the consumer habits of the population; the advent of a mass consumer society. The demand for cotton textiles was a distillation of many amorphous desires and aspirations that flourished in eighteenth century Britain. This was not a frivolous whim on the part of a small host of women, but a powerful economic force which might be tapped through the female section of the society, but which involved the entire society on a fundamental level. When the fashionable urge was translated into a demand for inexpensive, attractive cottons the industry was tied to one of the most potent commercial forces of that period. As a result of recent research, historians are coming to recognize a feature of economic development in the last half of the eighteenth century never before sufficiently acknowledged. This quality in the economic life of the nation set it off from all previous eras. During that time an economy developed and prospered that was geared to the profits of popular fashions, produced cheaply and in quantity for the mass market. Never before had a trade developed so quickly, exclusively on popular demand for mass-produced fashionable textiles. The provision of news on current fashions throughout the nation sparked generalized interest in British manufacturers among the middle and working classes. These classes were the basis of the market on which the cotton. industry depended for its vitality; it was among these sections of society that the creations of the cotton industry found the great new markets of the eighteenth century. Institutionalized dessimination of fashion information in print; a homogeneity of demand throughout the nation and the ranks of the nation; and the diversification and development of cotton products in response to this demand were the principal characteristics of this economic and social phenomenon.

Catherine ('Kitty') Clive (1711-1785) was the most famous singer-actress of mideighteenth century London, and one of the first women whom Drury Lane managers sought to popularize specifically as a singer. Drawing on theories of star construction in cinema, this thesis explores how the public persona of Mrs Clive 'composed' the music she sang. A key ingredient in star production is the wide-ranging dissemination of the star's image. The first chapter explains how the mid-eighteenth star was produced, outlining the period equivalents to what film scholars consider the sources of modern stardom: promotion, publicity, criticism and the work. This last means of star production is considered according to period traditions of comic writing, acting and spectatorship. These activities were part of the practice, begun in the Restoration, of creating a 'line' or metacharacter to fit the skills, reputation and unique acting mannerisms of principal players. The second chapter examines the vehicle of Mrs Clive's initial success, ballad opera. Ballad opera brought to the London stage the musical and discursive traditions of the street ballad singer, who typically communicated with audiences directly through indigenous, popular tunes. Direct address and native pedigree were to remain key elements in Mrs Clive's music, regardless of the genre she was singing. Chapters 3 to 5 trace three distinct phases in Mrs Clive's star production. Chapter 3 studies her promotion by Henry Carey, who taught her distinctive vocal techniques ('natural' singing; mimicry of opera singers) and supplied a sophisticated ballad-style repertory of which she was the chief exponent, 1728-32. Through Mrs Clive, Carey promoted his music and convictions - song in 'sublimated ballad style', the attractiveness of native traditions, female rights - and these became hallmarks of the Clive persona. Chapter 4 considers Henry Fielding's Clive publicity in his musical comedies and writings for her, 1732-6. Initially, he vivified the impudent nymph of her first 1729 mezzotint through stage characters, songs and epilogues. The criticism she drew for her refusal to join 1733-4 Drury Lane actors' rebellion forced him to re-invent Mrs Clive as a 'pious daughter'. In order to galvanize support for her, he broadened his publicity and made her an icon of conservative patriotic values and an enemy of Italian opera. Chapter 5 investigates Mrs Clive's management of her own image in her 1736 battle to retain the lead role in The Beggar's Opera. After her triumph, the duties of her new writer James Miller were simply to reflect audience perception of her. Chapters 6 and 7 analyse how the Clive persona, now rooted in public fantasy, shaped her two most important 'high style' musical roles, first in Thomas Arne's Comus, and then in Handel's Samson. Chapter 6 shows how the themes and musical procedures typical of the Clive persona were wedded to Milton's Comus, which then became the imaginative touchstone for a 'Comus' environment at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Chapter 7 examines her history as mediator of, and collaborator with, Handel, and shows how Handel's conceptualization of Dalilah in Samson mirrored that of Arne's Euphrosyne in Comus. Chapter 8 describes her ascendancy into 'polite society' through her friendship with Horace Walpole, and summarizes the means by which Mrs Clive's talents and audience perception of her shaped the works she performed.

From the 1740s to 1800 there was a great increase both in the output of novels, and the number of women novelists. At the same time, an idealized view of femininity was prevailing in society. The relationship between these two features of eighteenth-century life helps us to assess the contribution of some eighteenth-century women to the development of the novel. In this period women's novels show some distinctive features, particularly in their portrayal of women. The idealized eighteenth-century view of women saw them as naturally virtuous, chaste, and full of the sensibility which was increasingly seen as an important positive quality. Therefore an idealized woman is the central figure in many sentimental novels. This idealized figure, used especially by women novelists, is of ambiguous significance. She raises women's status by demonstrating female superiority, but does so by modesty and submissiveness, qualities which eighteenth-century feminists perceived as inimical to women's emancipation. Women's novels often contain contradictions between explicit support of female emancipation, and idealized portraits of submissive heroines. Chapter 1 discusses the reasons for the rise of the woman novelist. Chapter 2 discusses her role and the reviewers' part in defining that role. Chapter 3 discusses women novelists in relation to feminism. The following chapters focus on particular writers. Sarah Fielding is a didactic writer with a certain feminist consciousness. The novels of Frances Brooke and Elizabeth Griffith epitomize the idealization of the heroine. The comic attack on the heroine is described with reference to Charlotte Lennox's work. The"relationship between sentimental- ism, didacticism and feminism is studied with reference to Clara Reeve and Harriet Lee. Chapter 8 introduces the 1790s, when politics dominates fiction and sentimentalism is attacked, and chapters on Jane West, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Charlotte Smith suggest the variety of women novelists' responses to these developments.

The study of the war against Revolutionary France (1793-1802) has always been rather overshadowed in British history by the attractions of the second part of the struggle with France, the more successful Napoleonic Wars (1803-15). This is to see events out of perspective. Moreover, in both wars attention has usually been concentrated on the actual military operations rather than on the factors influencing the formulation of war policy and on the essential position of international diplomacy in this struggle. Although four (arguably five) European coalitions were organized against France in theSa wars, only the final, successful, combination has been studied in detail, yet, as this last coalition proved, the only way to defeat France was by such combinations. This thesis therefore examines both the handling of the Revolutionary War by the government of the Younger Pitt between 1793 and 1801, and the course of its diplomacy through its attempts to form a workable combination with the European Powers against France. It does this through a detailed study of British relations with Austria in particular. Austria was chosen because the connection with Vienna provides the key to British policy on the continent throughout the war. Although Ministers desired a general European Coalition, they came to realize that in practice their best hope of success lay in close co-operation and alliance with Austria, the Power with whom they appeared to have most in common and who possessed the largest and most efficient army facing France. Moreover, even in the period of disagreement with Austria between 1797 and 1799 the fact of this disagreement had a decisive effect on British policy and its execution. Such a study also has a wider perspective in that it marks the final revival of the Old System: the union of Britain, Austria and (to an ever decreasing extent) Holland, the efficacy of which as a barrier against France constituted one of the basic tenets of British foreign policy in the eighteenth century. The System had been in existence from 1689 to 1756, at which date the Austrians had dropped it, but British governments had never lost faith in it, and successively they had vainly attempted to restore it ever since. Its revival and failure in the 1790s therefore represents the passing of an era in British foreign policy, and the reasons for its passing are fully considered in this thesis. In order to place the Austrian alliance of the 1790s in its proper setting, both as an integral part of British war policy and as the major factor in British diplomacy, it has been necessary to consider Britain's relations with the other major European Powers besides Austria, and also the close relationship of diplomacy with three other factors: military considerations, finance, and public opinion. Attention has therefore been paid not only to diplomatic archives, but also to private correspondence among members of the government, to the state of the money market and foreign exchanges, to parliamentary debates and political pamphlets. Finally, in order to understand the path taken in Anglo-Austrian relations it has also been necessary to investigate policy and reactions to British policy in Vienna. Such a study reveals the immense difficulties faced by British Ministers in trying to pursue a coherent foreign policy in this war. Not only did they have to satisfy public opinion at home, but they also had to reconcile their natural wish to engage as many Powers as possible in the war with the obvious fact Austria was the most necessary Power to the implementation of their plans. The need to steer a delicate balance between a grand coalition and an Austrian alliance, at a time of conflicting interests in central and eastern Europe, was an insurmountable problem. Equally, the difficulties, both physical and personal, in trying to cooperate with an ally whose capital was anything from two weeks to two months away were immense. Moreover, even the best-laid plans were at the mercy of events elsewhere and of chance on the battlefield. As a result Ministers very rarely held the initiative and were often hurriedly reacting to ever-changing situations and problems. It was as a result of these factors that diplomatic needs in Britain's relationship with Austria dominated British strategy in the 1790s, constantly forcing Ministers away from their original intention of pursuing a maritime war. The truth of Dundas's observation that 'all modern wars are a contention of purse 1 is also apparent: from 1794 onward finance was at the heart of Anglo-Austrian relations and it held British policy in a straight-jacket. The legend of the limitless flowing of 'Pitt's gold' cannot be sustained when the paucity of British resources and the government's caution in using them is seen, but neither can the more recent myth of Pitt's niggardliness towards Austria. Pitt was quite willing to subsidize Austria, but having burnt his fingers on the disastrous Prussian subsidy of 1794, he wished to impose strict conditions which Austria was unwilling to accept. Consequently it was Austria, wishing to retain some freedom of action, and not Pitt, who insisted on the policy of loans which so much plagued Anglo-Austrian relations. The thesis begins -with, an examination of the factors which drew Britain and Austria into a close cooperation in the first year of the war. It shows that Britain became committed to Austria because of the circumstances in which the war began. The British government wished to ensure its dominance over that of Holland, it wished to protect its trade and security interests in the Netherlands, and it believed that the best way to attain these ea££ was by keeping the latter independent of France through their continued possession by Austria. In order to encourage the reluctant Austrians to retain the Netherlands, it had politically to hold out the hope of enlarging them at France's expense and militarily to commit its forces to a 'Flanders war' to obtain such an enlargement. Austria, which wished in any case for a British alliance to escape from its diplomatic isolation, took the bait and so assumed the leading part in the war on the continent. Despite difficulties caused by Britain's attempts to hold the rest of the Coalition together and by Austria's sudden financial demands in the summer of 1794, this cooperation developed into alliance because the British Ministers came to realize that of all the European Powers Austria was the most earnest in the war, contributed the largest and most effective army, and constituted the best barrier to France on the continent. In Vienna the Austria Foreign Minister, Baron Thugut, wanted the alliance because he hoped for conquests from France and needed British money to continue the war, and also because he saw the chance of a Triple Alliance of Austria, Britain, and Russia which would isolate Austria's rival Prussia and enable it to make gains in Poland at Prussia's expense. The thesis goes on to show that one of the basic reasons for the failure of the alliance, as in 1756, was Austria's rivalry with Prussia. For Britain the alliance was directed exclusively against France; for Austria it was directed as much against Prussia as France. Thugut became increasingly disstisfied when British Ministers not only refused to accept this interpretation but actually began to negotiate with Prussia to bring it back into the war. British Ministers became both annoyed and alarmed when they realized that Thugut, in his rivalry with Berlin, was neither interested in the Netherlands nor devoting his whole attention to the French war. As the war went from bad to worse the alliance fell apart because all bonds of common rnterest and mutual trust disappeared.

This thesis argues that much of the gender based criticism that has led to the "rediscovery" of neglected early modern women writers has, paradoxically, also served to limit our understanding of such writers by distracting attention from other aspects of their writing, such as their political commitments. The three authors considered, Jane Barker (1652-1732), Mary Caesar (1677-1741) and Anne Finch (1661-1720), have been selected precisely because Jacobitism is central to their writing. However, it will be argued that a focus upon gender politics in the texts of these writers has led to a failure to comprehend the party political boldness of their work. The thesis examines the writing of each author in turn and explores the implications of Barker's, Caesar's and Finch's Jacobite allegiances for their respective views of human history as played out in political affairs. It also considers the ways in which each author attempts to reconcile a cause that is supposedly supported by God with apparent political failure. The quest of Barker, Caesar and Finch to investigate these issues and to comprehend how Jacobitism forms part of their own authorial identities is central to what is meant here by "literary Jacobitism" in relation to these writers. The thesis demonstrates that Jacobitism is enabling for each of these three women as it enhances their ability to conceive of themselves as authors by allowing their sense of political identity to overcome their scruples about their position as women who write. However, it also illustrates that Jacobitism functions differently in the writing of each of the selected authors. It thus argues that an undifferentiated labelling of the work of these three women as "Jacobite" is as restrictive as their previous categorisation as "women writers".

The thesis is presented in five books each with a number of subdivisions or chapters. The first is composed of two chapters: chapter one deals with pan-evangelical developments from the early Evangelical revival to 1789. It examines the centripetal and centrifugal forces that served to unite but also to separate like-minded evangelicals. It briefly describee several early institutional attempts at church union, the proto-types of the great pan-evangelical organizations studied in the body of the thesis, Chapter two examines the more immediate forces between 1789 and 1795 that gave rise to the first major experiment in pan-evangelical cooperation - the London Missionary Society. It focuses on the ambivalent effects of the French Revolution on church union, initially separating evangelical Dissenters from churchmen, but later bringing them back together again. It also looks briefly at the role millennial prophecy played in drawing evangelicals closer together before the anticipated Second Coming. Book two examines the London Missionary Society in three chapters. Chapter three traces the largely abortive attempt to found an institution that was intended to unite all evangelical denominations, examining why this attempt ultimately failed. Chapter four studies inter-societal relations between the L.M.S. and other foreign missionary societies following this failure, and the continuing, though largely unsuccessful attempts to recreate a pan-evangelical union or federation in the mission world. Chapter five describes the state of internal relations within the Society itself, concluding with a brief anaysis of its fall into Congregational hands by 1818. Book three is a study of the British and Foreign Bible Society and is divided into four chapters. Chapter six examines the forces in Britain and on the Continent which led to the formation of an evangelical Bible society, showing that because of the simplicity of its objectives - the circulation of Bibles without note or comment - it could attract a much larger denominational patronage than either the L.M.S. or the Tract Society. Chapter seven demonstrates, however, that even in this simple design, the Society evoked criticism from High Church opponents who saw in it an immediate threat to the establishment. The controversy that issued from this opposition is examined in detail, together with the adverse effects that controversy had on the Society's internal cohesion, Chapter eight shows that many of the High Church accusations were based on fact, and that because of its growing size, the institution coald not always control some of its more irregular provincial auxiliaries. The sometimes arbitrary and largely ineffective way that the parent society tried to reassert its control over provincial affairs created dissident groups in Scotland and England leading to two major conflagrations - the Apocrypha and Tests Controversies - which are examined in chapter nine. Books four and five examine the Religious Tract Society and the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, each in two chapters. Chapters nine and twelve trace the early developments of each society (the London Society being at first a branch of the L.M.S.) from the late eighteenth century through to their emergence as major pan-evangelical institutions in the first decade of the nineteenth century. We discover that until the Bible Society had been in existence four years, the Tract Society and the evangelical mission to the Jews were much like the L.M.S. in denominational composition: only after 1808 did they also comprehend all the major evangelical bodies. Chapters ten and thirteen examine the internal controversies that plagued both societies showing why the R.T.S. was able to overcome internal dissension while the London Society fell into Anglican hands after only six years. Each book describes society activities during the period examined in this thesis, and attempts to show the impact of interdenominational cooperation on the church at large. Close attention has been paid to theological, social, and political developments contemporary with the pan-evangelical impulse and the impact these in turn had on the societies studied. By a comparative analysis of the four societies, their successess and failures, the thesis hopes to make a contribution to the ecumenical dialogue today.