Introduction

While civility has long been recognised as a central preoccupation of Enlightenment culture in Europe, it has rarely been considered in the acoustic contexts in which it was performed, represented, discussed and heard. This book focusses on how ideas of civility were shaped by changing experiences and meanings of sound in the British world during the long eighteenth century. In 1709, when the English moralist Lord Shaftesbury considered the best way to profit by the studied appreciation of poetic genius, he claimed it lay in contemplative ‘retirement’ and ‘seclusion’:

What Relish then must the World have (that common World of mix’d and undistinguish’d Company) without a little Solitude; without stepping now and then aside, out of the Road and beaten Track of Life, that tedious Circle of Noise and Show, which forces weary’d Mankind to seek relief from every poor Diversion? ¹