Spring, Matthew. "Dancing Opportunities on a Family Stay in 18th Century Bath: Anstey's New Bath Guide (1766) as a Window into Bath's Social Dance Scene."

Spring, Matthew. "Dancing Opportunities on a Family Stay in 18th Century Bath: Anstey's New Bath Guide (1766) as a Window into Bath's Social Dance Scene." In Retrieving & Reconstructing the Past through Dance [Proceedings of the Early Dance Circle Conference held on 6-8 May 2022], edited by Barbara Segal and Alena Shmakova, 45-53. Cambridge: Early Dance Circle, 2023.


Abstract:
Christopher Anstey first published his enormously successful New Bath Guide in 1766 and it remained in print until the early nineteenth-century going through over 20 editions. It caricatures a family stay in Bath in full season in a series of fifteen humorous letters. Dance is referred to in most letters and is the principal event in several. The family’s arrival, a public breakfast, a private ball and an assembly room ball are all satirised at some length, and involve dancing. This paper compares the dance events in the Anstey’s Book with what can be established from newspaper reports of the time and diary accounts as the reality. It seems that most events where there were musicians could become opportunities for social dancing if desired by the company.