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Fashionable Diseases in Georgian Bath: Fiction and the Emergence of a British Model of Spa Sociability
Author(s) -
CossicPericarpin Annick
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/1754-0208.12506
Subject(s) - apprehension , persuasion , sensibility , georgian , negotiation , aesthetics , literature , history , psychology , sociology , art , social psychology , philosophy , linguistics , cognitive psychology , social science
Published at different times, Christopher Anstey's The New Bath Guide (1766), Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) and Jane Austen's Persuasion (1818) testify to the emergence of new forms of social interaction, particularly on display in spas. Their apprehension of the role of illness, a major agent of sociability in Bath, varies considerably. This essay interrogates the function of fashionable diseases in three literary genres: the satirical epistle, the epistolary novel and the novel of sensibility. Most particularly, it examines the way these genres negotiate the construction or the destruction of a specific model of spa sociability.