Sublimity!

Turner (1775-1851), Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812)
More here

Turner, Passage of the Gothard (1804)

Gericault (1791-1824), The Raft of the Medusa (1818-9)
Read more here

John Martin (1789-1854), The Great Day of His Wrath (1853):

Landscape Painting

William Gilpin (1724-1800), Scene without Picturesque Adornment (1792):

Scene with Picturesque Adornment:

John Constable (1776-1837), Salisbury Cathedral (1825):

Further info on this painting

Further info on this painting

The Royal Academy

The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1787 by Johan Heinrich Ramberg and Pietro Martini [Print]:

The Murder of David Rizzio by John Opie [Painting]:

Prince George with Black Servant by Sir Joshua Reynolds [Painting]:

Reynolds, Seven Discourses on Art
A Nice Reynolds Timeline by the Tate

BBC Radio Program on Lyrical Ballads

Follow this link to another clever discussion led by Melvyn Bragg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cwszf/In_Our_Time_Lyrical_Ballads/

Further information here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cwszf#supporting-content

Circulating Libraries

The circulating library flourished in the later eighteenth century as the reading public of fiction, in particular, exploded.  Remember that the paperback is a twentieth-century invention and that public lending libraries exist but not on the scale (and easy of access) that we know today.  Several of our texts have refered to the triple-decker (three volume) format in which many books appeared; not surprisingly, the more volumes the more expensive the book.  To buy a copy of a triple-decker outright might cost--in modern terms--somewhere between $70 and $100, depending on how you estimate inflation.  Not surprisingly, paying (or subscribing) to a lending or circulating library proved a better option for most readers.  It is important to note that the lending library emerges alongside Gothic fiction in the 1790s: the institution enables the spread of such works (making them broadly availble to the public) and profits considerably from their popularity.

Follow this link for a few choice words on Jane Austen and the circulating library:
http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/

A few words on the most successful of all 19th-c circulating libraries, Mudie's:
http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/mudie.html

Walpole, Strawberry Hill

Awesome tour experience provided by the wonderful people at the Walpole Library at Yale:
http://lwlimages.library.yale.edu/strawberryhill/tour_home.html

Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto

Title page of the first edition: notice that the book is pitched as a translation from Italian.

Title page of a later edition: from the second edition on, Walpole explained his work as "Gothic Story."

An illustration from The Castle of Otranto: