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Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

This book tells the story of the bitter feud between the Duchess of Kingston and the actor, Samuel Foote, which resulted in a pair of scandalous trials in London in 1776. (The monograph pictured is a related recent publication.) Set against the backdrop of the American Revolution, the duchess's state trial for bigamy and Foote's criminal trial for attempted sodomy engrossed the attention of Londoners, including George III, Parliament, and the nobility. Drawing on the rich archival and manuscript accounts of these cases, as well as plays, poems, and letters, this book demonstrates how sexuality became a favored tool of political and personal attack in the 1770s and how the British elite responded to the pressures of bourgeois morality during this turbulent period.

Current Research

Along with continuing research (articles) on mid- to late-18th-century British theatre history, I am beginning a new book about the treason trial of the Reverend William Jackson, who was (incongruously) an Anglican clergyman and a Jacobin spy. At the height of the Reign of Terror he accepted a spy mission that took him from Paris to London and Dublin. Betrayed by a friend, he was arrested for treason in 1794 and convicted the following year. He committed suicide in the prisoner's dock on the day of his sentencing hearing, making him (according to one historian) the first martyr of the modern Irish independence movement. But for various reasons Jackson's case has been almost entirely ignored by historians and cultural critics. This book will argue for the importance of Jackson's case in terms of the British reaction to the Reign of Terror, the radical culture of the 1790s, and the contemporary and historical treatment of the many treason and sedition trials from that era.

For more information, see the English Department's faculty profile for Matthew Kinservik.

Matthew Kinservik

Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies