Hannah Smith

For the undergraduate course, I teach outline papers for both first-year students and FHS (years 2 and 3) on periods of British history from 1500 to 1830. For first-year students, I also teach European and World History from 1400-1650, as well as Art and History for the Approaches to History paper and an optional subject on Witch-craft and Witch-hunting in Early Modern Europe. For FHS, I teach two Further Subjects (War and Society in Britain and Europe, c.1650-1815 and Court Culture and Art in Early Modern Europe, 1580-1700) and a Special Subject (English Architecture, 1660-1720). At graduate level, I supervise doctoral theses in British political, cultural, gender and military history, circa 1660-1750.

I work on the history of political culture and the history of gender in Britain in the period 1660 to 1760. My first book explored the politics and culture of the early Georgian monarchy, and I continue to work on eighteenth-century court culture (co-editing a new edition of Lord Hervey’s Memoirs of the Reign of King George II and his Correspondence). My interest in gender history is reflected in my work on the early eighteenth-century writer Susanna Centlivre, and research on eighteenth-century libertinism. My most recent book, Armies and Political Change in Britain, 1660 to 1750 (Oxford University Press, 2021), argued that armies had a profound impact on the major political events of late seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Britain. I am currently writing a book on the development of equestrianism in twentieth-century Britain.

‘War, the State and Local Office-Holders in Britain, 1689-1750’, English Historical Review CXXXIX 600 (2024), 1117-1142

Armies and Political Change in Britain, 1660-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2021)

‘Court Culture and Godly Monarchy: Henry Purcell and Charles Sedley’s 1692 Birthday Ode for Mary II’, in: Politics, Religion and Ideas in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain: Essays in Honour of Mark Goldie ed. Justin Champion, John Coffey, Tim Harris and John Marshall (Boydell, 2019), 219-237

‘The Hanoverian Succession and the Politicisation of the British Army’, in The Hanoverian Succession: Dynastic Politics and Monarchical Culture, ed. Andreas Gestrich and Michael Schaich (Ashgate, 2015), 207-226

‘Susanna Centlivre, ‘Our Church’s Safety’ and ‘Whig feminism’’, in Religion and Women in Britain, 1660-1760, ed. Sarah Apetrei and Hannah Smith (Ashgate, 2014), 145-161

Religion and Women in Britain, 1660-1760, co-edited with Sarah Apetrei (Ashgate, 2014)

Civilians and War in Europe, 1618-1815, co-edited with Erica Charters and Eve Rosenhaft (Liverpool University Press, 2012)

‘Hephaestion and Alexander: Lord Hervey, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the Royal Favourite in England in the 1730s’, with Stephen Taylor, English Historical Review 124 (2009), 283-312

Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714-1760 (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

'English 'Feminist' Writings and Judith Drake's 'An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex' (1696)', Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 727-747