Small Things in the Eighteenth Century

Chloe Wigston Smith is the author of Women, Work, and Clothes in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (2013) and co-editor, with Serena Dyer, of Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Nation of Makers (2020). Her current research, supported by a British Academy fellowship, centers on material culture and the Atlantic world. Beth Fowkes Tobin, a recipient of NEH and NSF fellowships, is the author of The Duchess's Shells: Natural History Collecting in the Age of Cook's Voyages (2014), Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760–1830 (2005), and Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (1999).

Introduction: The Scale and Sense of Small Things Chloe Wigston Smith and Beth Fowkes Tobin; Part I. Reading Small Things: 1. “The sum of All in All”: The miniature book and the nature of legibility Abigail Williams; 2. Nuts, flies, thimbles, and thumbs: Eighteenth-century children's literature and scale Katherine Wakely-Mulroney; 3. Gothic syntax Cynthia Wall; 4. Small, familiar things on trial and on stage Chloe Wigston Smith; Part II. Small Things in Time and Space: 5. On the smallness of numismatic objects Crystal B. Lake; 6. Crinoidal limestone and Staffordshire teapots: Material and temporal scales in eighteenth-century Britain Kate Smith; 7. “Joineriana”: The small fragments and parts of eighteenth-century assemblages Freya Gowrley; 8. “Pray what a pox are those damned strings of Wampum?”: British understandings of Wampum in the eighteenth century Robbie Richardson; Part III. Small Things at Hand: 9. “We bought a guillotine neatly done in bone”: Illicit industries on board British prison hulks, 1775–1815 Anna McKay; 10. “What number?”: Reform, authority, and identity in late-eighteenth-century military buttons Matthew Keagle; 11. Two men's leather letter cases: Mercantile pride and hierarchies of display Pauline Rushton; 12. The aesthetic of smallness: Chelsea porcelain seal trinkets and Britain's global gaze, 1750–1775 Patricia F. Ferguson; 13. “Small gifts foster friendship”: Hortense de Beauharnais, amateur art, and the politics of exchange in post-revolutionary France Marina Kliger; Part IV. Small Things on the Move: 14. Hooke's ant Tita Chico; 15. Portable patriotism: Britannia and material nationhood in miniature Serena Dyer; 16. Revolutionary histories in small things: Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette on printed ceramics, c. 1793–1796 Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth; 17. A box of tea and the British Empire Romita Ray; 18. Afterword: A thing's perspective Hanneke Grootenboer.