Elections in 18th-Century England Polling, Politics and Participation

This volume has emerged from a project called 'Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture' (ECPPEC) which ran from 2020 to 2023 and was designed to shed new light on different kinds of participation in elections between 1695 and the Reform Act of 1832. Gathered here are an introductory essay that summarises the work of the project, presenting new information about the number and type of English parliamentary elections and by-elections in the period, and seven essays exploring different aspects of a range of individual polls. The essays range from elections for the Scottish Privy Council in the late 17th century to the voting practices in the General Court of Proprietors of the East India Company in the mid-18th, to the literary preferences of Bristol electors in the early 19th. century. Two essays examine the often-overlooked elections taking place in university constituencies. Together, these essays have much to tell us about how elections worked in a period notorious for its restricted and uneven franchise, what shaped voting choices, and how people were able to participate in electoral activity regardless of whether they were entitled to vote.