Author Archive

Musical Moments: Handel's "Messiah," Musical Patronage, and Princess Augusta

By Marie Pellissier, Omohundro Institute Apprentice, William & Mary Welcome back to our Georgian Goodies blog series, where we highlight interesting, timely, or just plain nifty documents from the Georgian Papers Programme! Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” is staple of the Christmas season, and December inevitably brings about performances of this piece. However, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759),… Read More »

Illuminating the Virtuous King George III

Cassandra Good is an assistant professor of History at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. She was awarded an Omohundro Institute Georgian Papers Programme fellowship in 2017. Professor Good is currently working on a study of George Washington’s family in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, examining how the next generation shaped the family’s public image… Read More »

Behind the Scenes in the Chapel Royal: The Chapel Royal Memorandum Book

This is a watercolor image of the interior of the Chapel Royal at Whitehall c. 1811. The Chapel Royal at Whitehall was in the former Banqueting House, which was renovated by Sir Christopher Wren after the a 1698 fire. Image courtesy of the British Library.

By Marie Pellissier, Omohundro Institute Apprentice, William & Mary Welcome back to our Georgian Goodies blog series, where we highlight interesting, timely, or just plain nifty documents from the Georgian Papers Programme! What’s so special about the Chapel Royal? That phrase refers not to the building itself, but to the group of people responsible for… Read More »

Ghosts! In the Archives! We Thought You Ought to Know

Portrait of Prince Octavius, a 1782 painting by Thomas Gainsborough, depicting a young boy with long blonde hair.

By Marie Pellissier, Omohundro Institute Apprentice, William & Mary Welcome back to our Georgian Goodies blog series, where we highlight interesting, timely, or just plain nifty documents from the Georgian Papers Programme! It’s almost Halloween! We may or may not have found some ghosts in the archives… but we shall leave the final determination about… Read More »

Introducing the Georgian Goodies Series

George III, by Allan Ramsay, 1762. In this portrait, George III wears a wig with a silk bag over the ponytail.

Marie Pellissier is a Digital Projects Apprentice at the Omohundro Institute. She is a first-year PhD student at William & Mary, and works on Early American women’s intellectual history. This is the first in a series of blog posts called Georgian Goodies, where we highlight interesting, timely, or just plain nifty documents from the Georgian… Read More »

George III in London: What Hamilton Tells Us About the King’s Role

by Arthur Burns (King’s College London) and Karin Wulf (Omohundro Institute) [After reading this, why not visit our virtual Hamilton and George III exhibition?]   We’ve written before for the Georgian Papers Programme about King George III in American popular culture, and about the importance of Hamilton to that oeuvre.  Seeing Michael Jibson in action in… Read More »

Jane Austen and the Prince Regent: The Very First Purchase of an Austen Novel

During his time in the Royal Archives, Omohundro Institute Georgian Papers Programme fellow Nicholas Foretek found exciting new evidence that the first documented purchase of any novel by Jane Austen was made by none other than the Prince Regent (later George IV).  Moreover, the purchase—of Sense and Sensibility—was made two days before the book was advertised… Read More »

A Royal Christmas List

Robert Paulett, OI-GPP Fellow, shares this discovery from his recent work in Royal Archives. As the holiday shopping season intensifies in these last weeks, it is always tempting to wonder whether you should buy less. Should your non-plussed children balk at such an idea, you can cite as precedent the Christmas present list from the… Read More »

Hamilton’s George III in London

by Karin Wulf Hamilton, a quintessentially American story, has arrived in London. While many American commenters and historians have focused on the “Ten Dollar Founding Father without a Father” and his compatriots, the racial politics of the founding period and the intentional casting of the musical, and the gendered politics of the Schuyler sisters and… Read More »

The Admiral and the Aide-de-Camp

The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Sir Samuel Hood and Jacob de Budé by Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. The portrait of one of the most important British naval officers to serve during the American War for Independence hangs in the Manchester Art Gallery in Manchester, England. The 1783 painting by famed artist Sir Joshua Reynolds depicts Rear… Read More »