Vibrations

Margaret Anne Doody

• The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in 18th-century Britain by G.J. Barker-Benfield
  Chicago, 520 pp, £39.95, October 1992, ISBN 0 226 03314 7
• Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel: The Senses in Social Context by Ann Jessie van Sant
  Cambridge, 143 pp, £27.95, January 1993, ISBN 0 521 40226 3
• Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the 18th Century by Philip Rawlings
  Routledge, 222 pp, £40.00, October 1992, ISBN 0 415 05056 1
• Mother Clap’s Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830 by Rictor Norton
  Gay Men’s Press, 302 pp, £12.95, September 1992, ISBN 0 85449 188 0

Pray, sir, give me leave to ask you ... what, in your opinion, is the meaning of the word sentimental, so much in vogue amongst the polite, both in town and country? In letters and common conversation, I have asked several who make use of it, and have generally received for answer, it is – it is – sentimental. Every thing clever and agreeable is comprehended in that word; but ... it is impossible every thing clever and agreeable can be so common as this word