Natalie Hanley-Smith

I am a historian of Georgian Britain, with research expertise in marriage, adultery, emotion, gossip, and political culture. I am currently consolidating my doctoral research on the ménage-à-trois and marital nonconformity into a monograph. The book, tentatively titled, Controversial Intimacies: Marriage, Gossip, and Scandal in British Society, c.1780-1840, examines a range of unconventional marital, quasi-marital, and extramarital relationships, and analyses different perspectives on them, including those of the participants, their friends, families, and the broader ‘public’. It sheds new light on the reception of the more individualistic culture that emerged out of the Enlightenment and Romantic movement by revealing that although ‘enlightened’ ideas created new possibilities for individuals to justify intimacies previously considered ‘illicit’, on the grounds that the sincerity of their feelings served to justify and moralise them, these relationships remained embedded in sets of familial and communal norms and networks that were resistant to change and influenced by a much more prescriptive and intolerant culture.

Alongside this, I have recently co-edited a special issue of Parliamentary History with Professor Sarah Richardson on the topic of ‘Passion, Politics, and Parliament’, and I have a forthcoming chapter in The Cultural History of Luxury series (Bloomsbury Academic) that examines representations of George IV’s final mistress, the Marchioness of Conyngham.

I am in the process of developing a new research project which will examine Anglo women's experiences in the European Mediterranean c.1750-1850, and how they were affected by the growing nationalist movements and significant geopolitical transformations in that region. I am particularly interested in performances of 'Britishness' and in the differences between customs and mores in British colonial societies compared to those in expatriate communities.