Mediating Cultural Memory in Britain and Ireland

Mediating Cultural Memory is the first book to analyze the relationship between cultural memory, national identity and the changing media ecology in early eighteenth-century Britain. Leith Davis focuses on five pivotal episodes in the histories of England, Scotland and Ireland: the 1688 'Glorious' Revolution; the War of the Two Kings in Ireland (1688-91); the Scottish colonial enterprise in Darien (1695-1700); the 1715 Jacobite Rising; and the 1745 Jacobite Rising. She explores the initial inscription of these episodes in forms such as ballads, official documents, manuscript newsletters, correspondence, newspapers and popular histories, and examines how counter-memories of these events continued to circulate in later mediations. Bringing together Memory Studies, Book History and British Studies, Mediating Cultural Memory offers a new interpretation of the early eighteenth century as a crucial stage in the development of cultural memory and illuminates the processes of remembrance and forgetting that have shaped the nation of Britain.

• Provides a new history of cultural memory in the context of the expansion of print culture in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland, relating this to the development of the nation-state and the shifting media ecology of the period
• Focuses on the initial inscription of five key episodes in the creation of British national memory, offering fresh insight into the 1688 'Glorious' Revolution, the 1689-91 War of the Two Kings, the Company of Scotland expedition to Darien and the two Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745
• Adopts an innovative approach to Book History that considers the role of orality and manuscript in the shaping of eighteenth-century print culture, suggesting a new understanding of how diverse media interacted to create, store and re-circulate complex cultural memories