‘In the Greatest Wildness of my Youth’: Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and Mid‐Eighteenth‐Century Libertinism

Much has been written about discourses concerning male sexual behaviour in the eighteenth century; given the nature of the surviving sources, it is harder to research actual sexual behaviour. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1708–1759) was a celebrated poet, wit and diplomat in his own lifetime but is now largely forgotten. The copious surviving manuscripts of his correspondence and verses provide rich and explicit material for an examination of mid‐eighteenth‐century libertinism from two perspectives – that of its ribald practitioners and that of an ex‐libertine father and mentor – within the context of scholarly debates on eighteenth‐century politeness and masculinities.