Introduction

Summary

Eighteenth-century England has been described as witnessing a ‘rage for gambling’. This notion, however, offers very little in respect of either characterizing or explaining gambling in its various forms in this period. Instead, this chapter uses, amongst other things, modern gambling theory as developed by social psychologists as part of an attempt to begin to reframe our understanding of gambling and its various meanings in British society in the long eighteenth century. Particular attention is devoted to attitudes towards chance, social mobility, and the highly gendered nature of much gambling. Gambling is represented here in terms of the intimate and multiple connections between it and major currents and developments in British society; indeed, gambling in this as in any other period needs to be understood primarily in the context of the social and cultural values and settings which shaped its significance.