The Public Face(s) of Albinia Hobart, Countess of Buckinghamshire/"The Shop on the Corner of Wing's Lane"
The Public Face(s) of Albinia Hobart, Countess of Buckinghamshire: Vice, Theatrics, Politics, and the Press in the twenty years between 1784 and 1804, Albinia Hobart, Countess of Buckinghamshire (1738-1816), appeared in over fifty extant satirical prints. Satirized for both her excessive girth and for her transgressive pastimes, Albinia was a constant target of the press and artists alike. While her behaviour was not unique for the period, the fact that she was involved in, and consequently satirized for, so many different types of public and semi-public activities makes Albinia an exceptional case. The combination of longevity and satirical breadth present in the extant satirical imagery of Albinia offers a unique opportunity to explore major societal debates that took place in Georgian England though an examination of the visual record of a single figure. This study provides the first detailed examination of the ways in which Albinia was represented in print culture, contextualizing these works within their social and political contexts. in so doing, it, to paraphrase Linda Colley, charts the world of eighteenth-century London in a life, and a life in the world of eighteenth-century London. "The Shop on the Corner of Wing's Lane": Retail Spaces in Colonial Boston Between 1754 and 1775, retailer and merchant Samuel Abbot operated a retail space in colonial Boston. on any given day, Abbot participated in what T.H. Breen has termed the "empire of goods" that came to dominate the British Atlantic world after 1740. This study of Abbot's shop attempts to reconstruct both the physical space in which he worked and plied his trade – situating his shop in the city, neighborhood, and street wherein it was located – and begins to examine the day-to-day retail activities that took place "on the corner of Wing's lane, near the town dock." Focusing on the twenty-year period between 1754 and 1774, it illuminates the physicality of shopping and retailing in colonial Boston in the years leading up to the American Revolution to build up a picture of the materiality of Boston shops in the eighteenth century and to interpret the impact of space on polite shopping practices. Colonial Boston was a city shaped by consumption; however, consumption was also shaped by the city. It is thus important to re-place these practices within the physical spaces in which they took place, as architectural space, of both the shop itself and the city's urban space writ large, impacted practices of consumption.
