"WE HAD CARDING": HOSPITABLE CARD PLAY AND POLITE DOMESTIC SOCIABILITY AMONG THE MIDDLING SORT IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND.

CARD games; MIDDLE class; PLAYING cards; LEISURE; AMUSEMENTS; CARD players; 18TH century British history

The article discusses card-playing and other forms of polite socializing among the business and professional class in eighteenth-century England. Card games offered an attainable form of leisure for merchants, physicians, lawyers, and others who no longer found it necessary to labor all waking hours. The author draws upon a survey as well as periodicals, literature, letters, and diaries from the period to shed light on how cards achieved popularity and helped shape emerging norms of sociability.