Book Launch and Reception for: Gender, Science and Sociability in the Diary of Jane Ewbank of York (1778-1824)

Book Launch - Gender, Science and Sociability in the Diary of Jane Ewbank of York (1778-1824), edited by Matthew Daniel Eddy, Rachel Feldberg and Jane Rendall (Boydell Press: 2026).

The Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York, together with the book’s editors and contributors, cordially invite you to join them in person or online to attend a celebration of the book’s themes and relevance.

In addition to a Q&A session and a wine reception, there will be short presentations about the book by contributors, including Michael Brown, Matthew Daniel Eddy, Rachel Feldberg, Joanna de Groot, Roseanna Kettle, Jon Mee, Jane Rendall and Gillian Russell.

About Gender, Science and Sociability
Between 1803 and 1805, Jane Ewbank of York kept a fascinating diary which chronicled her place in the lively Enlightenment world of northern England. This interdisciplinary collection examines Ewbank’s diary as a vital site of knowledge- making, illuminating women’s intellectual lives in Enlightenment York, where science, cultural criticism and sociability intersected.

Ewbank’s diary offers a rare, richly textured account of a provincial woman’s engagement with science, cultural criticism, and sociability in York and beyond. The volume includes an annotated transcription of 34,000-word Ewbank’s diary alongside essays situating it within the gendered knowledge networks of northern England. The essays engage with historiographies of early modern life-writing and Enlightenment sociability and they challenge colonial silences and foreground global entanglements. The contributors interrogate the diary as a media technology, a cognitive tool, and an emotionally informed thinking device.

Intersecting topics range from natural theology, scientific education and the emotional economies of medicine to women’s writing, theatre and landscape, exploring Ewbank’s participation in scientific lectures and the arts in York and her encounters with figures such as the novelist and educationalist Maria Edgeworth, the scientific lecturer Henry Moyes, and the philanthropist Catherine Cappe.

Editors
MATTHEW DANIEL EDDY is Durham University’s Professor and Chair in the History and Philosophy of Science.

RACHEL FELDBERG is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York.

JANE RENDALL is an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Eighteenth Studies and the History Department at the University of York.

Contributors: Michael Brown, Matthew Daniel Eddy, Rachel Feldberg, Corinne
Fowler, Joanna de Groot, Roseanna Kettle, Karen Lipsedge, Jon Mee, Jane Rendall,
Gillian Russell, Millie Schurch.

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Gender, Science and Sociability launch