Association and Enlightenment

Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830

Mark C. Wallace and Jane Rendall (Eds.)

2020
304 pages
$47.95
ISBN 9781684482665
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

Social clubs as they existed in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland were varied: they could be convivial, sporting, or scholarly, or they could be a significant and dynamic social force, committed to improvement and national regeneration as well as to sociability. The essays in this volume­ - the first full-length study of the subject in fifty years - examine the complex history of clubs and societies in Scotland from 1700 to 1830. Contributors address attitudes toward associations, their meeting-places and rituals, their links with the growth of the professions and with literary culture, and the ways in which they were structured by both class and gender. By widening the context in which clubs and societies are set, this volume offers a new framework for understanding them, bringing together the inheritance of the Scottish past, the unique and cohesive polite culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the broader context of associational patterns common to Britain, Ireland, and beyond.

Order here

Reviews

"As a whole, it adds to our growing appreciation of the distinct features and history of eighteenth-century Scottish sociability. The showcased research reflects careful consideration of exactly where gaps in the scholarship remain and makes a deliberate effort to fill them."
- In Eighteenth-Century Scotland, Spring 2021

"[A] useful new perspective on the era of the Scottish Enlightenment that offers readers much stimulating material and many insightful interpretations."
-David Spadafora, author of The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain

"The editors have brought together a volume that explores all that we have discovered about the place of clubs and societies in Scotland during the long eighteenth century, answering many of the questions posed so long ago in Davis D. McElroy's pioneering study of 1969. Bucknell has published what will be a lasting and essential work."
-Stephen Brown, co-editor of Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland: Enlightenment and Expansion 1707-1800

"Handsomely produced."
-Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society newsletter

About the editors:

Mark C. Wallace is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. A former visiting research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, he has written extensively on Scottish Freemasonry and Scottish clubs and societies, particularly in the eighteenth century.

Jane Rendall is an honorary fellow of the History Department and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York (UK). She has published extensively on the history of the Enlightenment and on women's and feminist history, especially in Scotland, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $150.00, 9781684482672; PDF: $47.95, 9781684482702; EPUB: $47.95, 9781684482689