The Romantic Tavern
Literature and Conviviality in the Age of Revolution

An examination of taverns in the Romantic period, with a particular focus on architecture and the culture of conviviality.

Ian Newman (Author)

9781108470377, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 March 2019

298 pages, 22 b/w illus. 3 maps
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.63 kg

'The Romantic Tavern will likely change the way readers encounter written Romantic works.' John Savarese, European Romantic Review

The tavern is widely acknowledged as central to the cultural and political life of Britain, yet widely misunderstood. Ian Newman provides the first sustained account of one of the primary institutions of the late eighteenth-century public sphere. The tavern was a venue not only for serious political and literary debate, but also for physical pleasure - the ludic, libidinal and gastronomic enjoyments with which late Georgian public life was inextricably entwined. This study focuses on the architecture of taverns and the people who frequented them, as well as the artistic forms - drinking songs, ballads, Anacreontic poetry, and toasting - with which the tavern was associated. By examining the culture of conviviality that emerged alongside other new forms of sociability in the second half of the eighteenth century, The Romantic Tavern argues for the importance of conviviality as a complex new form of sociability shaped by masculine political gathering and mixed company entertainments.

Part I. Tavern Space: 1. Introduction
2. London tavern: Edmund Burke, the East India Company and literary men
3. Crown and anchor dreams: sedition in the Strand
Part II. Tavern Genres: 4. Political ballads: Captain Morris and the convivial Whigs
5. Anacreontic odes: drink poetry and the politics of pleasure
6. Bawdy and lyrical ballads: Wordsworth and the ballad debates of the 1790s
7. Toasting: political speech, convivial art
8. Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature: history & criticism [DS]