The Ephemeral Eighteenth Century: Print, Sociability, and the Cultures of Collecting (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 129)

This history of printed ephemera's rise as an eighteenth-century cultural category transforms understanding of 'disposable' printed items. Cover Half-title Series information Title page Copyright information Dedication Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction: ‘All the Ephemera of Our Lives’ ‘This Is Ephemera’: The 1960s and After ‘Non-book’ History Ephemera and Its Relationship to the Print ‘Job’ Chapter Overview Chapter 1 Accidental Readings and Diurnal Historiographies: The Invention of Ephemera Band-Boxes and the Paper Scrap Ephemerae and ‘Durable Volumes’ The Ephemeral 1790s Chapter 2 Making Collections: Enlightenment Ephemerology ‘The Method Is . . . Tyme’ ‘This I found’: Anthony Wood as Ephemera Collector Plot Catalogues and Frost Fairs Ephemeral Remains Chapter 3 The Natural History of Sociability: Sarah Sophia Banks and Her Ephemera Collections ‘Id genus omne’: SSB as Collector The ‘Social Life’ of the Ticket Fashionable Sociability and the ‘Ticket System’ Sarah Sophia Banks’s ‘Sociablarium’ Chapter 4 Sarah Sophia Banks’s ‘Magic Encyclopedia’ Ballooning as Media History Chapter 5 ‘Announcing Each Day the Performances’: Playbills as Theatre/Media History Holding the Playbill to the Light Dead Walls Garnering the Playbill ‘THEATRE, SYDNEY’ Chapter 6 Transacting Hospitality: The Novel Networks of the Visiting Card The Paper Economy of the Visiting Card Card Dramas Archiving a ‘Whole Life’ ‘Withinside’: Binding Ephemera with the Novel Chapter 7 England in 1814: Frost Fairs, Peace, and Persuasion Frost Fair 1814 Ephemeral War and Peace Papering Peace Taking Apart the Royal Booth Jane Austen’s Newsmen Conclusion Bibliography Manuscripts and Archives Prints and Drawings Coins and Medals Newspapers and Journals Catalogues in Order by Date, Earliest to Latest Other Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index Often regarded as trivial and disposable, printed ephemera, such as tickets, playbills and handbills, was essential in the development of eighteenth-century culture. In this original study, richly illustrated with examples from across the period, Gillian Russell examines the emergence of the cultural category of printed ephemera, its relationship with forms of sociability, the history of the book, and ideas of what constituted the boundaries of literature and literary value. Russell explores the role of contemporary collectors such as Sarah Sophia Banks in preserving such material, arguing for 'ephemerology' as a distinctive strand of popular antiquarianism. Multi-disciplinary in scope, The Ephemeral Eighteenth Century reveals new perspectives on the history of theatre, the fiction of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, and on the history of bibliography, as well as highlighting the continuing relevance of the concept of ephemerality to how we connect through social media today. This book revises the view of printed ephemera as a trivial or disposable by giving a history of its role in eighteenth-century culture. It explores how tickets, playbills and posters became a way of facilitating social interaction and, for collectors, a means of preserving the evanescence of daily life.