Introduction

Abstract

Fame and Fortune takes four broad categories—lives, literature, public places and sciences—to advance reciprocal understanding of Sir John Hill and mid-eighteenth century London. Given Hill’s prolific, diverse and discipline-confounding works, no one book can encompass the full range of his significance in mid-Georgian society. The Introduction supplies context to his extraordinary intellectual activities and contributors’ themes of ambition, competition and tribalism, patronage and preferment, the expanding metropolis, the growth of commerce, communication, networks, motion and speed, exploring the types of public space London was becoming. We provide a fresh look at the 1750s, a decade which has become the squeezed middle of the century for literary critics and historians; we make the case for restoring it to fuller view on its own terms, understanding its features and how London was energised in new ways. Fame and Fortune presents Hill’s activities in coffeehouses, learned societies and institutions, pleasure gardens, markets, theatres, bagnios and other meeting places frequented by fashionable (and not-so-fashionable) society, outlining a post-Habermas public sphere of sociability—and fracas. The Introduction argues for his importance as a bridge between literature and science: besides botanical and geological activities featured in chapters, Hill contributed to the study of hypochondria with trade books and panaceas for sleeplessness and stress. Able to reach and cultivate a general public of readers and purchasers, Hill can be seen as a filter for the age, a maverick conformist and an exceptional type.