Join Georgian Papers Programme scholar Angel-Luke O’Donnell for an online version of the popular GPP Coffee Break series at King’s College London.
Join us on May 24, 2022, at 3:00 pm BST (10:00 am ET) for a presentation by Georgian Papers Programme Fellow Mary-Jannet Leith (University of Southampton) titled “‘Then I play’d upon the Harpsichord’: Music in the Private Lives of George III and Queen Charlotte.”
The paper offers a work-in-progress update on Dr. Leith’s 2021 GPP Fellowship research, which explores the various ways George III and Queen Charlotte engaged with music in their private, domestic lives. Using the wealth of materials available in the digitised Georgian Papers catalogue (private correspondence, diaries, accounts, and miscellaneous papers of members of both royals), together with collections held at the British Library, the paper will shed light on their personal relationships with music. In Queen Charlotte’s diaries, she often records her own harpsichord practice, musical evenings at home with friends, as well as recreational attendance of the ‘Ancient Concerts’ and the opera. The queen’s correspondence also reveals close relationships with the many German musicians she selected for her Queen’s Band, particularly J.C. Bach, whose death in 1782 she found profoundly upsetting. This sense of a strong emotional connection with music and musicians is also evident in the extensive medical reports of George III, in which he is often described as arranging concerts for wished-for company, playing on the harpsichord and flute, and singing sacred and secular music. Examining these descriptions may bring us closer to an understanding of the true extent of George III’s personal relationship with music, and the solace which it appears to have given him during his periods of illness.
This project has received further funding from the Continuo Foundation, and a live concert re-creating a musical evening with Queen Charlotte will be performed and filmed for later release in summer 2022 by award-winning period group Ensemble Hesperi.
About the series
The Georgian Papers Programme (GPP) coffee breaks are an informal opportunity for researchers throughout the world to gather together virtually to discuss ongoing projects. Each session features a short presentation from a GPP researcher followed by open discussion of the project, suggestions for related material, or general conversation about the archives and research. The presenters in these events are often in the early stages of their project and the coffee breaks aim to facilitate the exchange of knowledge about both the materials in Windsor as well as other repositories throughout the world.
We limit the size of these events to 40 participants in order to encourage discussion among and between participants. No recordings are made of the discussions and no tweeting or posting on other social media platforms during the event is permitted in order to create a trusted working environment for developing projects.
Dr. Garrett is working on a biography of Queen Charlotte which aims to place her in a wider context of queenship in early modern Europe by examining her patronage and her legacy, alongside consideration of her role as royal wife and mother.
Join us on March 4, 2022, at 5:00 pm GST (noon ET) for a presentation by award-winning fashion historian, curator, and journalist Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell titled “‘High Heads’: Hair, Politics, and Power at the Georgian Court.”
Charles Prior is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Hull, where he co-leads the research group 
Henrietta Harrison is Professor of Modern Chinese Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford and Stanley Ho Tutorial Fellow in Chinese History at Pembroke College. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. Before coming to Oxford she taught in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds, and in the Department of History at Harvard University. Her books include The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire (Princeton University Press, forthcoming), The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man’s Life in a North China Village 1857-1942 (Stanford University Press, 2005) and The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village (University of California Press, 2013).
David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University and an Affiliated Faculty Member at Harvard Law School. He is also an Honorary Professor of History at both the University of Sydney and Queen’s University Belfast and an Honorary Fellow of St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, among them The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007), Foundations of Modern International Thought (2013), The History Manifesto (2014, co-auth.), and Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (2017). He has held fellowships and visiting positions in Australia, Britain, China, France, Germany, South Korea, and the United States, and in 2019, he was the Sons of the American Revolution Visiting Professor at King’s College London in association with the Georgian Papers Programme and the Royal Archives.
Ben Schofield is Reader in German and Co-Director of the Centre for Modern Literature & Culture at King’s College London. His research focuses on Transnational Studies and Comparative Cultural Studies, with core concerns in German and American Studies, and 19th Century Studies, especially the history of Revolution and nation-formation.
Mary Louise O’Donnell is a harpist and musicologist who has performed extensively throughout Ireland, Europe, Africa and Asia as a soloist and with various ensembles. She has published widely on topics relating to Irish cultural history, semiotics and performance studies; her first book, Ireland’s Harp: The Shaping of Irish Identity c. 1770-1880, was published in 2014 by UCD Press. Mary Louise has received many awards and grants to further her research, including an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, Centre Culturel Irlandais Fellowship and Dobbin Scholarship (ICUF).
Stephanie Howard-Smith completed her PhD on the cultural history of the lapdog in the long eighteenth century at Queen Mary University of London in 2018. Dr. Howard-Smith has published work on the global circulation of pugs and porcelain and on the reaction of dog lovers and haters to a 1760 hydrophobia outbreak and dog cull in London.