Jekyll designed gardens in a non-traditional way: she made them to look like paintings instead of the highly formal style of the time. In the 1870s a style of art known as Impressionism made it easier for people without formal training to paint. The polite threw open their doors to visitors, inviting the world into their parlours to drink the new exotic hot drinks (tea, coffee, chocolate), to gossip, and to admire the shiny new fixtures and fittings. Home improvements and interior decoration were the craze of the age. This year a total of 84 Fellows – 52 UK Fellows, 29 Corresponding Fellows and 3 Honorary Fellows – have been elected to the Fellowship. More information

One painting in particular is infamous in the history of the representation of women in British art. If ever there was a commemoration of artistic fraternity, Johann Zoffany RA’s The Academicians of the Royal Academy, of 1771-72 (pictured), appears to be it. The recent foundation of the Royal Academy is memorialised in this group portrait of 35 men, two of them naked models, preparing to embark on a life class. A typical day began at 9 in the morning, which was a normal rising time for both sexes. While Parliament officially opened at 9 (10 in the 1770s), most members arrived around noon and conducted public business around 2 to 3 in the afternoon.When 39-year-old Elizabeth Platt lost her husband to diabetes in 1743, she was left with seven children, unhinged by her grief. Fortunately ‘when she obtained a few hours slumber she dreamed her husband was beside her, and used every tender argument to console and comfort her’. Sarah Pennell, 'Perfecting Practice? Women, Manuscript Recipes and Knowledge in Early Modern England', in Victoria E. Burke & Jonathan Gibson (eds), Early Modern Women's Manuscript Writing (2004) Galin's work provides proof of how vital comparative and cosmopolitan perspectives are in today’s complex and interconnected world. The research undertaken in our School of Languages, Linguistics and Film is richer for his contributions and inspiring example." Angela completed her first degree at the University of Chicago in the department of History. This year she is studying at King’s on the MA in Eighteenth Century Studies, an interdisciplinary programme taught in partnership with the British Museum and convened by Dr Elizabeth Eger in the English department. The MA aims to bring together the study of material and intellectual, cultural and political history and draws upon the extraordinary wealth of eighteenth-century resources in London’s museums and archives. The intellectual energy generated through teaching the MA formed a significant factor in founding the AHRI-funded Centre for Enlightenment Studies at King’s.

Thanks to her influence, gardens began to be seen as works of art in themselves: alive and three-dimensional, and yet just as valid as those hanging on gallery walls. The Arts and Crafts movement was popular at the time of the Industrial Revolution and a reaction to the increase in factory-made goods: people wanted attractive, hand-made and original objects. I was determined not to trespass too much on the themes and interventions of my first book the Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England. (2) Above all, I wanted to challenge myself with new sources – account books, ledgers, inventories, surviving furniture, textiles etc – to see if I could wrest a narrative from numbers, bare details and inanimate objects. In the evening, social life really took off. London during the eighteenth century offered a multitude of entertainments. Women acted as hostesses for political dinners and parties at their London homes—carefully deciding whom to invite and which parties to attend. Outside of private parties, London offered the opera, theatre, and pleasure gardens (the two most famous being Vauxhall and Ranelagh). Not only entertaining, these were places to see and be seen. I have pieced together a narrative from courtship letters, confessions and wills, diaries and autobiographies, inventories, advertisements, burglary trials, and upholsterers' ledgers to bring to life a history so taken for granted that it was rarely put into words.Other exclusions were driven by the shape of the field. Church court cases are a colourful source for gender dynamics at home and bear directly on my core themes, but I was conscious that these have been used already for related purposes in Joanne Bailey, Unquiet Lives: Marriage and Marriage Breakdown in England, 1660–1800, Elizabeth Foyster, Marital Violence: An English Family History, 1660–1857 and most recently Junko Akamatsu’s London University thesis on the court of arches. (3) His and Hers: Gender, Consumption and Household Accounting in 18th century England’, in Lyndal Roper and Ruth Harris (eds), The Art of Survival: Essays in Honour of Olwen Hufton (link is external)(Past and Present, 2006)., pp. 12-38 The lecture of the evening was the culmination of ten years of research by herself and Dr. Hannah Greig (University of York). They sought to plot out the schedule of a normal day for the political elite using everyday sources. She peppered her lecture with visual material and anecdotes, which gave the academic lecture a more personal and engaging tone—there were multiple times when everyone erupted into laughter. Her main argument was that women, though excluded from Parliament, were still involved in politics in other ways, since politics in the Georgian era often spilled over into social activities as well. requiring no formal training. Dubbed the Impressionists, they were rebelling against the rules and restraint of the art establishment. And they would inspire one female artist in particular, nestled in the idyllic Surrey countryside, to take a love of impressionism and push the boundaries of art'