Sociability, Print and Public Culture in Romantic Period Britain and Australia

This interdisciplinary project, combining perspectives from literary, social, theatre and book history, explores the importance of sociability in the commercialisation of culture that transformed Britain and Australia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Focusing on printed ephemera as important evidence of social interaction in this period, the project will suggest new perspectives on more visible and culturally dominant forms of print such as the novel. Its outcomes will be two scholarly monographs, a book aimed at a general readership, related articles and conference proceedings.