Women, Sociability and Theatre in Georgian London (review)

Gillian Russell's brilliant and innovative book Women, Sociability and Theatre in Georgian London combines several focuses into a clever and insightful analysis of women, culture, and late Georgian theatre, replete with substantial illustrations. Concentrating on the 1760s and 1770s, Russell argues that the increasing visibility of women in public life created an atmosphere of anxiety, scandal, crisis, and even opportunity, manifested in "a complex interpenetration of issues of gender, sexuality, class, economics, empire and nationhood" (p. 2). As part of the Cambridge Studies in Romanticism Series, Russell's book details a "revolution in the modes of sociability" that served as a prelude to the more political decade of the 1790s (p. 4).

Organized in seven chapters plus an introduction and conclusion, Russell builds on recent work on women in public life by scholars such as Amanda Vickery and Elaine Chalus. Russell's particular contribution to this growing field is an analysis of "fashionable sociability" in the period, by which she means "a highly theatricalized and thoroughly feminized arena of social interaction, identified with, though not the sole preserve of, the female aristocracy and upper gentry" (p. 10). She also looks at what she calls "domiciliary sociability," or "the range of activities—balls, assemblies, masquerades, theatricals, dinners, card-parties and general visiting—conducted in the household, by which elite women in particular were able to claim a role for themselves in mid-eighteenth-century public culture" (p. 11), as a potential source of power, knowledge, and influence.

One of the many valuable aspects of Russell's book is her ability to recreate a female community from diverse angles—to link women writers and intellectuals (like Fanny Burney) with women of fashion (like actress Frances Abington), who "shared a taste for display and theatricality, for lavish interior design and fine clothing" but do not often share company in literary or cultural analyses (p. 4). In addition, Russell maintains that these associations held additional importance in that the theatre and other venues and modes of entertainment were not peripheral to "'real' politics or 'real' culture" but were instead "revelatory of a broader cultural politics" crucial to Britain in the late eighteenth century (p. 13).

Chapter two, "The Circe of Soho: Teresa Cornelys and Carlisle House," looks at Cornelys's creation of a space in Carlisle House that mingled public and private and "was feminized, allowing women of fashion to amplify the social and political significance of the sociability conducted within their own households" (p. 36). Cornelys masterfully used the press as a form of publicity, and the newspapers in turn helped ensconce her as an icon of fashionable sociability. This is perhaps the most important chapter in the book, as Russell frequently links her later chapters to Cornelys's influence and makes a case for her enduring importance in London society. Chapter three, "Harmonic Routs and Midnight Revels: the Politics of Masquerade" compares Cornelys's revival of the masquerade at Carlisle House, an entertainment that combined music, dating, dancing, and disguise, with the coffee house as parallel sites of the public sphere. At the time of Cornelys's death from breast cancer in 1797 at age 74, she had already developed her signature sociable practice and its attendant challenge to male sociability, the effects of which lingered long after Cornelys herself was gone.

Chapters four and five, "'Dissipation's hydra reign': Almack's and the Coterie" and "'Welcome to the Pleasure Dome': The London Pantheon," cover sites of fashionable sociability inspired by Cornelys: Almack's assembly rooms, which opened in 1765; the Coterie, a controversial club of fashionable women founded in 1770; and The London Pantheon assembly and concert rooms. These three arenas represent women's encroachment upon the male homosocial public sphere typified by the coffee house, tavern, and club.

The last three chapters of the book examine the impact of Cornelys's "sociable revolution" on theatre and drama in the period (p. 119). In chapter six, "Lady Bab and Mrs. Ab: The Woman of Fashion and...