The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s. John Barrell.Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-1794. Volume I, Introduction + Trials of Thomas Paine (1793), John Frost (1794) and Daniel Isaac Eaton (1794). Volume II, Trial of Thomas Hardy (1794), vol. I Volume III, Trial of Thomas Hardy (1795), vol. II Volume IV, Trial of Thomas Hardy (1795), vol. III Volume V, Trial of Thomas Hardy (1795), vol. IV. John Barrell and Jon Mee.

This article will consider how dress, textiles, manuscripts and images in the Thomas Hardy Archive illuminate his writing and reveal the accuracy of his descriptions of clothing in novels including Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Rural clothing, fashionable styles, drawings and illustrations will shed new light on his writing through providing an insight into the people's dress he described so eloquently in his writing. The textiles and clothing in the Archive are also significant as nineteenth-century working-class dress is relatively rare. Everyday rural clothing does not tend to survive, so a collection belonging to Hardy's family of country stonemasons provides new opportunities for research in this area. Even more unusual is clothing reliably provenanced to famous people or writers, and such garments that do exist tend to be from the middle or upper classes. This article will show how the combination of surviving dress, biographical context and literary framework enriches understanding of Hardy's words and informs research into nineteenth-century rural dress.

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Liberty, Property and Popular Politics

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474405676.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Intellectual History ◽

French Revolution ◽

British History ◽

Historical Study ◽

Thomas Paine ◽

Parliamentary History ◽

Long Eighteenth Century ◽

Scottish History ◽

The University

Few scholars can claim to have shaped the historical study of the long eighteenth century more profoundly than Professor H. T. Dickinson, who, until his retirement in 2006, held the Sir Richard Lodge Chair of British History at the University of Edinburgh. This volume, based on contributions from Dickinson's students, friends and colleagues from around the world, offers a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century Britain and provides a tribute to a remarkable scholarly career. Dickinson's work and career provides the ideal lens through which to take a detailed snapshot of current research in a number of areas. The book includes contributions from scholars working in intellectual history, political and parliamentary history, ecclesiastical and naval history; discussions of major themes such as Jacobitism, the French Revolution, popular radicalism and conservatism; and essays on prominent individuals in English and Scottish history, including Edmund Burke, Thomas Muir, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. The result is a uniquely rich and detailed collection with an impressive breadth of coverage.

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