Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine, vol. 97 (2004), pp. 1-14 
‘In the Newest Manner’: Social Life in Late 
Georgian Devizes 
by Lorna Haycock 
This paper examines the social networks and cosmopolitan culture of late eighteenth-century Devizes, which reflected 
not only the sophistication of a mature and prosperous community, but also the re-awakening of provincial life in the 
Georgian period. 
Pleasures and business divide the life of man. The 
agreeableness of pleasures corrects the bitterness or 
refreshes and unbends us from the fatigue of 
business!. 
Alongside the well-known developments of the 
Georgian period — the industrial and agrarian 
changes, the transport developments and the wars 
and overseas trade which resulted in the acquisition 
of empire — other important social and economic 
trends can be traced. The eighteenth century saw 
the rise of a consumer society of social emulation 
and cosmopolitan fashion and the development of a 
distinctive Georgian ethos. The growing wealth of 
‘the middling sort’? was channelled increasingly 
into leisure pursuits, voluntary associations and 
cultural activities, emulating the lifestyle of ‘the 
quality’ and creating a new wave of urban 
sociability, but also causing a polarisation between 
cosmopolitan and popular culture. 
A remarkable feature of late eighteenth-century 
Devizes was the advance of professional men such 
as doctors and lawyers in the town’s hierarchy. 
They played an important role in the development 
of a fashionable urban culture, which came to be 
regarded as a mark of social status, a badge of the 
charmed world of the gentry and bourgeoisie. The 
memorial tablet of John Garth M.P. (d. 1764) in St 
Mary’s church, states that: 
to the sedentary way of living which he fell into from 
an early and continued love for the pleasures of 
literature, the illness was chiefly owing that 
occasioned his Death 
Book collecting and reading for pleasure and 
instruction, long the preserve of the clergy and 
gentry, spread among professionals and traders in 
the late eighteenth century and became part of the 
background of polite life. Newspapers made the 
printed word more accessible and London books 
were now increasingly available in country 
bookshops. In the mid-eighteenth century, 
Dissenting minister Samuel Fancourt had 
established a circulating library in Salisbury, 
providing books within a sixty-mile radius; 
doubtless he had Devizes subscribers.’Publishers’ 
advertising and the growth of adult literacy helped 
to stimulate the demand for a wide variety of 
secular literature. James Lackington wrote in 1791 : 
‘I cannot help observe that the sale of books has 
increased prodigiously within the last twenty years . 
.. All ranks and degrees now read’.’ Devizes doctors 
and surgeons were among the foremost owners of 
books, mostly volumes on science and physic. 
Thomas Gisborne advised that the physician 
Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Society, The Museum, 41 Long Street, Devizes SN10 1NS 
