Sacred to Female Patriotism

Through examining the history of dress in the period, the personal nature of political relationships, the history of ideas and political philosophy, "Sacred to Female Patriotism" makes a case for the extensive power of females in the political system of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain. Missing from much of the scholarship on 18th century British politics is recognition of the extensive participation of aristocratic women. Fortunately, as a literate and self-conscious group, these women created and preserved vast manuscript collections now available to historians. In Sacred to Female Patriotism, Judith S. Lewis taps into these sources to demonstrate how the social and political worlds of Georgian Britain interacted to give women an influential voice in politics that was previously unimagined. The result is a lively, powerful, and important story that challenges many of our comfortable stereotypes of the past while providing us with a better understanding of 18th century electoral politics in general.