Exploratory, investigative, and energetically analytical, 1650–1850 covers the full expanse of long-eighteenth-century thought, writing, and art while delivering abundant revelatory detail. Essays on well-known cultural figures combine with studies of emerging topics to unveil a vivid rendering of a dynamic period, simultaneously committed to singular genius and universal improvement. Welcoming research on all nations and language traditions, 1650–1850 invites readers into a truly global Enlightenment.

The contributors to volume 31 join with Enlightenment thinkers in charting the outposts of long eighteenth-century culture while discovering new features in seemingly familiar terrain. Essays explore outlandish but often observed activities such as medical quackery, Rosicrucian hermeticism, and the oral antics associated with the twisted “Malaprop” tradition. In happy contrast, the volume offers the second half of a sparkling special feature on the most familiar of all substances, water. Contributors lead us through an astounding assortment of aqueous topics, from the heritage of The Compleat Angler to the sanctified sprinklings of holy water. As always, 1650–1850 culminates in a bevy of full-length book reviews that robustly address the latest scholarship on long-established specialties, unusual subjects, and broad reevaluations of the period.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

ISSN: 1065-3112

ESSAYS
Edited by Kevin L. Cope
John Moore and Quackery 3 
Pat Rogers and Allison Muri
Between the Sheets: Documenting Tom Cumming, Johnson’s “Fighting Quaker” 23
Duncan Samuel and Robert G. Walker
Mrs. Malaprop’s Forgotten Foremothers, from Stage to Page and Back 37
Anaclara Castro
Rosicrucian Confusion and Masonic Machinations in the Conservative Writings of Eleanor Anne Porden and Anna Jane Vardill 64 
Marsha Keith Schuchard
 

SPECIAL FEATURE
The Cultural Ramifications of Water in Early Modern Texts and Images (1650–1850), Part II
Edited by Leigh G. Dillard and Christina Ionescu
Introduction to the Special Feature 93
Leigh G. Dillard
When Talent Meets Torrent: Illustrating, Explaining, and Enhancing Extreme Aqueous Environments 105
Kevin L. Cope
The Memory of Failure: Giovanni Battista Antonelli’s Waterways Project for Philip II and Canalmania in the Spanish Enlightenment 125
Daniel Crespo-Delgado
Life, Death, and Water: Visual Commemorations of Admiral Shovell 150
Anne Betty Weinshenker
“The Contemplative Man’s Recreation”: Illustration and the Human Element in The Compleat Angler 172
Leigh G. Dillard
Religious Agencies of Water: Hydolatry in Picart and Bernard’s Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723–1737) 197
Steff Nellis
 
BOOK REVIEWS
Edited by Samara Anne Cahill
David A. Brewer and Crystal B. Lake, eds., Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Vol. 52 225
Reviewed by Christopher D. Johnson
Catherine M. Jaffe and Karen Stolley, eds., The Black Legend of Spain and its Atlantic Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Constructing National Identities 231
Reviewed by Samara Anne Cahill
Alexis Chema and Betty A. Schellenberg, eds., The Manuscript Book in the Long Eighteenth Century, a special issue of Eighteenth-Century Life, Vol. 48, No. 1 238
Reviewed by Kandice Sharren 
Melvyn New and Anthony W. Lee, eds., Notes on Footnotes: Annotating Eighteenth-Century Literature 241
Reviewed by Donald W. Nichol
Robin L. Thomas, Palaces of Reason: Royal Residences of Bourbon Naples 245
Reviewed by William Stargard
John Callanan, Man-Devil The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe 248
Reviewed by Malcolm Jack
Conference Review: Bernard Mandeville in the University of Porto, May 2024 251
Reviewed by Malcolm Jack
Penelope Aubin, The Life of Madam de Beaumount and The Life of Charlotta Du Pont, ed. David A. Brewer 252
Reviewed by Heather Heckman-McKenna
Mohammad Sakhnini, British Encounters with Syrian-Mesopotamian Overland Routes to India, 1751–1795: Rethinking Enlightenment Improvement 256
Reviewed by R. J. W. Mills
Cai Tinglan, Miscellany of the South Seas: A Chinese Scholar’s Chronicle of Shipwreck and Travel through 1830s Vietnam, trans. and introduced by Kathlene Baldanza and Zhao Lu 259
Reviewed by Susan Spencer
George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Ronjaunee Chatterjee 264
Reviewed by A. W. Lee
 
Review Essay
Poets and Prophets from Blake to Marx 271
A. W. Lee

About the Editors 295
About the Contributors 297