My book Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets in London, 1688-1763 is available now from the University of Virginia Press. In it, I argue that a conceptual space I call the theater-finance nexus was vital to early modern economic and political thought, and that it became a critical site for theorizations of London’s emergent publics at the turn of the eighteenth century.
Praise for Speculative Enterprise:
“Speculative Enterprise is an exceptionally well written book that narrates complex financial events accessibly, drawing from an impressive range of sources, both in theatrical studies and in economic history.”
Carrie Shanafelt, Farleigh Dickinson University, writing for Eighteenth-Century Studies
“Burkert’s nuanced exploration of the emergence of the liberal economy around 1700 has much to teach us about the pleasures and pitfalls of our own neoliberal economy today.”
Julia Fawcett, University of California, Berkeley, writing for The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats
“In [Burkert’s] hands, historical information is enlivened into presence, a lesson she learns from her archive and makes available to us.”
Suvir Kaul, University of Pennsylvania, writing for Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
“Burkert’s thesis is highly compelling, and I cannot do justice here to the erudition and deftness of her argumentation and analysis….The book will prove an extremely valuable contribution to scholars working on the theatre history of the period, as well as on cultural representations of, and engagements with, finance and economics in the early eighteenth century.”
Stephen Watkins, Oxford University, writing for Theatre Survey
“Burkert supports her bold claims about the knowledge and consciousness of the London audiences in these years, demonstrating thoroughly what writers could confidently assume about audience knowledge, desire, and expectations. Her methodology, as much as her conclusions, will certainly enrich the field of eighteenth-century theater studies.”
Melissa Bloom Bissonette, St. John Fisher University, writing for The Journal of British Studies
“This lucid, compelling, and highly original study has the rare quality of making novel insights feel familiar. [Speculative Enterprise is] a major contribution to eighteenth-century studies, theater history, and economic history.”
Emily Hodgson Anderson, University of Southern California, writing for the Press
“Burkert demonstrates a new way of understanding the relationship between the theater and the financialization of the early modern economic system, revealing the construction of a new kind of what we might call ‘publicness’ — a way of conceptualizing both the theatergoing public and the broader mass of population that this public represented.”
John O’Brien, University of Virginia, writing for the Press
