Join us for the May instalment of Ben’s Book Club, a monthly virtual gathering looking at themes relating to Benjamin Franklin, the 18th century, and American history. 

This month we will be talking to Kate Chisholm about her book ‘Fanny Burney: her life’, which tells the story of Fanny Burney, who is best known for her book Evelina, one of the most engaging novels of the eighteenth century. Over the course of her long life, she was also an incomparable diarist, witnessing both the madness of George III and the young Queen Victoria’s coronation.  

Chisholm’s delightful biography, incorporating the latest research and illustrate with unusual portraits and drawings, is lively, funny, shocking, informative and deeply moving; it paints a vivid portrait of a woman of great talent, against the changing background of England and France, a culture and an age. 

Kate Chisholm is the author of three books, including ‘Fanny Burney: her life’, and used to write about radio for the Spectator magazine. She is a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow and Hawthornden Fellow and is currently working on the Elizabeth Montagu Correspondence Online project (EMCO) and a book inspired by her family’s life in India. 

You can purchase ‘Fanny Burney: Her Life’ here. 

Join us even if you don’t have a chance to read the book by the event date! 

This event is free of charge but please consider making an online donation here to support the work of Benjamin Franklin House. 

Join us for the March instalment of Ben’s Book Club, a monthly virtual gathering looking at themes relating to Benjamin Franklin, the 18^th century, and American history.

This month we will be talking to Lucy Inglis about her book ‘Georgian London: Into the Streets’, which takes readers on a tour of London’s most formative age – the age of love, sex, intellect, art, great ambition and fantastic ruin.

Travel back to the Georgian years, a time that changed expectations of what life could be. Peek into the gilded drawing rooms of the aristocracy, walk down the quiet avenues of the new middle class, and crouch in the damp doorways of the poor. But watch your wallet – tourists make perfect prey for the thriving community of hawkers, prostitutes and scavengers.

This book is about the Georgians who called London their home, from dukes and artists to rent boys and hot air balloonists meeting dog-nappers and life-models along the way. It investigates the legacies they left us in architecture and art, science and society, and shows the making of the capital millions know and love today.

Lucy Inglis is a historian and novelist, a speaker, and occasionally a television presenter and voice in the radio. She is the creator of the Georgian London blog and her book of the same name was shortlisted for the History Today Longman Prize. ‘City of Halves’, her first novel for young adults, was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Branford Boase award and her second ‘Crow Mountain’ was published in 2015. Her book on the history of opium, ‘Milk of Paradise’, was published in 2019.

You can purchase a hardcopy of ‘Georgian London: Into the Streets’ here. You can purchase the Kindle edition here.

Join us even if you don’t have a chance to read the book by the event date!

This event is free of charge but please consider making an online donation here to support the work of Benjamin Franklin House.

Watch the full video below: