Jon Stobart

Mark Rothery

This study explores the consumption practices of the landed aristocracy of Georgian England. Focussing on three families and drawing on detailed analysis of account books, receipted bills, household inventories, diaries and correspondence, Consumption and the Country House charts the spending patterns of this elite group during the so-called consumer revolution of the eighteenth century. Generally examined through the lens of middling families, homes and motivations, this book explores the ways in which the aristocracy were engaged in this wider transformation of English society. Analysis centres on the goods that the aristocracy purchased, both luxurious and mundane; the extent to which they pursued fashionable modes and goods; the role that family and friends played in shaping notions of taste; the influence of gender on taste and refinement; the geographical reach of provisioning and the networks that lay behind this consumer activity, and the way this all contributed to the construction of the country house. The country house thus emerges as much more than a repository of luxury and splendour; it lay at the heart of complex networks of exchange, sociability, demand, and supply. Exploring these processes and relationships serves to reanimate the country house, making it an active site of consumption rather than simply an expression of power and taste, and drawing it into the mainstream of consumption histories. At the same time, the landed aristocracy are shown to be rounded consumers, driven by values of thrift and restraint as much as extravagant desires, and valuing the old as well as the new, not least as markers of their pedigree and heritance.

Consumption and the Country House

Consumers in eighteenth-century England were firmly embedded in an expanding world of goods, one that incorporated a range of novel foods (tobacco, chocolate, coffee, and tea) and new supplies of more established commodities, including sugar, spices, and dried fruits. Much has been written about the attraction of these goods, which went from being novelties or expensive luxuries in the mid-seventeenth century to central elements of the British diet a century or so later. They have been linked to the rise of Britain as a commercial and imperial power, whilst their consumption is seen as transforming many aspects of British society and culture, from mealtimes to gender identity. Despite this huge significance to ideas of consumer change, we know remarkably little about the everyday processes through which groceries were sold, bought, and consumed. In tracing the lines of supply that carried groceries from merchants to consumers, Sugar and Spice reveals how changes in retailing and shopping were central to the broader transformation of consumption and consumer practices, but also questions established ideas about the motivations underpinning consumer choices. It demonstrates the dynamic nature of eighteenth-century retailing; the importance of advertisements in promoting sales and shaping consumer perceptions, and the role of groceries in making shopping an everyday activity. At the same time, it shows how both retailers and their customers were influenced by the practicalities and pleasures of consumption. They were active agents in consumer change, shaping their own practices rather than caught up in a single socially-inclusive cultural project such as politeness or respectability.

Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England, 1650-1830

Sugar and Spice

Alastair Owens

Property is central to any historical analyses of production, reproduction and consumption. It lies at the heart of discussions of material culture, class relations and the household economy. This landmark collection of articles represents a wide range of approaches to and perspectives on the ownership, use and transmission of property in eighteenth and nineteenth-century towns.

Property and Inheritance in the Town, 1700-1900

Urban Fortunes

Neil Raven

Focusing on the Midlands, this book examines urban and industrial change from 1700-1830, arguing that a complex urban system and its idividual constituents both responded to and shaped wider processes of industrialisation. the nature of urban and indu.

Urban and Industrial Change in the Midlands, C.1700-1840

Towns, Regions and Industries

Peter Stabel

Bruno Blondé

Ilja Van Damme

1. Introduction. -- 2. The fairs of early modern Italy / E. Welch. -- 3. Renewal of the shop system: Italy in the early modern period / D. Calabi. -- 4. 'Piu honorati et suntuosi ala Republica': botteghe and luxary retail along Siena's Strada Romana / F. Nevola. -- 5. From the market to the shop: retail and urban space in late medieval Bruges / P. Stabel. -- 6. Markets, shops, inns, taverns and private houses in medieval English trade / R. Britnell. -- 7. Sites of desire: shops, selds and wardrobes in London and other English cities, 1100-1550 / D. Keene. -- 8. Shops, markets and retailers in London's Cheapside, c. 1500-1700 / V. Harding. -- 9. Dealing with diversity: pedlars in the Southern Netherlands in the eighteenth century / H. Deceulaer. -- 10. Changing consumer preferences and evolutions in relailing. Buying and selling consumer durables in Antwerp (c. 1648-c. 1748) / I. Van Damme. -- 11. Clothes, cabinets and carriages: second-hand dealing in eighteenth-century England / J. Stobart.-- 12. Plebeian commercial circuits and everyday material exchange in England, c. 1600-1900 / B. Lemire. -- 13. Martino Grimaldi and the merchant-charlatans of early modern Italy / D. Gentilcore. -- 14. Liquidation or certification? Small claims disputes and retail credit in seventeenth-century Venice / J. Shaw. -- 15. Trade and gender emancipation: retailing women in sixteenth-century Antwerp / L. Van Aert. -- 16. Eighteenth-century Maastricht shopkeepers and their hinterland customers / E. Steegen. -- 17. The social relations of shopping in early-modern England / C. Walsh.

Retail Circuits and Practices in Mediaeval and Early Modern Europe

Buyers & Sellers

"Country houses were grand statements of power and status, but they were also places where people lived. This book outlines traces the changes in layout, the new technologies, and the innovations in furniture that made them more convenient and comfortable. It argues that these material changes were just one aspect of comfort in the country house: feeling comfortable was just as important as being comfortable. Achieving this involved the comfort and solace to be found in daily routines, religious faith and, above all, relationships with family and friends. Such emotional comforts, and the attachment to things and places that embodied and memorialized them, made country houses into homes"--

Comfort in the Eighteenth-Century Country House

Country houses were grand statements of power and status, but they were also places where people lived. This book traces the changes in layout, the new technologies, and the innovations in furniture that made them more convenient and comfortable. It argues that these material changes were just one aspect of comfort in the country house: feeling comfortable was just as important as being comfortable. Achieving this involved the comfort and solace to be found in daily routines, religious faith and, above all, relationships with family and friends. Such emotional comforts, and the attachment to things and places that embodied and memorialized them, made country houses into homes.

Reveals how changes in retailing and shopping were central to the broader transformation of consumption and consumer practices, and questions established ideas about the motivations underpinning consumer choices. Offers new perspectives on the link between supply and demand and the motivations underpinning consumer choices.

"This book has much to offer second- and third-year undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in economic, social and urban history, and historical geography."--Jacket.

North West England C. 1700-60

The First Industrial Region

Johanna Ilmakunnas

Jon Stobart and Johanna Ilmakunnas bring together a range of scholars from across mainland Europe and the UK to examine luxury and taste in early modern Europe. In the 18th century, debates raged about the economic, social and moral impacts of luxury, whilst taste was viewed as a refining influence and a marker of rank and status. This book takes a fresh, comparative approach to these ideas, drawing together new scholarship to examine three related areas in a wide variety of European contexts. Firstly, the deployment of luxury goods in displays of status and how these practices varied across space and time. Secondly, the processes of communicating and acquiring taste and luxury: how did people obtain tasteful and luxurious goods, and how did they recognise them as such? Thirdly, the ways in which ideas of taste and luxury crossed national, political and economic boundaries: what happened to established ideas of luxury and taste as goods moved from one country to another, and during times of political transformation? Through the analysis of case studies looking at consumption practices, material culture, political economy and retail marketing, A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe challenges established readings of luxury and taste. This is a crucial volume for any historian seeking a more nuanced understanding of material culture, consumption and luxury in early modern Europe.

Display, Acquisition and Boundaries

A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe

Comfort, both physical and affective, is a key aspect in our conceptualization of the home as a place of emotional attachment, yet its study remains under-developed in the context of the European house. In this volume, Jon Stobart has assembled an international cast of contributors to discuss the ways in which architectural and spatial innovations coupled with the emotional assemblage of objects to create comfortable homes in early modern Europe. The book features a two-section structure focusing on the historiography of architectural and spatial innovations and material culture in the early modern home. It also includes 10 case studies which draw on specific examples, from water closets in Georgian Dublin to wallpapers in 19th-century Cambridge, to illustrate how people made use of and responded to the technological improvements and the emotional assemblage of objects which made the home comfortable. In addition, it explores the role of memory and memorialisation in the domestic space, and the extent to which home comforts could be carried about by travellers or reproduced in places far removed from the home. The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 offers a fresh contribution to the study of comfort in the early modern home and will be vital reading for academics and students interested in early modern history, material culture and the history of interior architecture.

The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900

Gudrun Andersson

This book explores the ways in which the lives and routines of a wide range of people across different parts of Europe and the wider world were structured and played out through everyday practices. It focuses on the detail of individual lives and how these were shaped by spaces and places, by movement and material culture – both the buildings they occupied and the objects they used in their everyday lives. Drawing on original research by a range of established and emerging scholars, each chapter peers into the lives of people from various social groups as they went about their daily lives, from citizens on the streets to aristocrats at home in their country houses, and from the urban elite at leisure to seamen on board ships bound for the East Indies. For all these people, daily routines were important in structuring their lives, giving them a rhythm that was knowable and meaningful in its temporal regularity, be that daily, weekly, or seasonal. So too were their everyday encounters and relationships with other people, within and beyond the home; these shaped their practices, movements, and identities and thus served to mould society in a broader sense.

Jon Stobart

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