Consumption and consumerism in early modern England

Historical Journal

Volumn 42, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 549-564

  Pennell, Sara ^a  

^a VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84997646996     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X99008559     Document Type: Article

References (124)

1. John Brewer, The pleasures of the imagination (London, 1997).
2. Recent examples of the sheer chronological and cultural diversity of historical consumption studies include Daniel Miller, Mass consumption and material culture (Oxford, 1987)
3. Craig Clunas, Superfluous things: material culture and social status in early modern China (Cambridge, 1991)
4. James Davidson, Courtesans and fishcakes: the consuming passions of classical Athens (London, 1997).
5. Joyce Appleby, ‘Consumption in early modern social thought’, in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the world of goods (London, 1993), p. 162.
6. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The birth of a consumer society: commercialisation in the eighteenth century (London, 1982).
7. Jean-Christophe Agnew, ‘Coming up for air: consumer culture in historical perspective’, in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption, p. 34.
8. In addition to Agnew, see Lisa Tiersten, ‘Redefining consumer culture: recent literature on consumption and the bourgeosie in western Europe’, Radical History Review, 54 (1993), pp. 116–159
9. Paul Glennie, ‘Consumption within historical studies’, in Daniel Miller, ed., Acknowledging consumption: a review of new studies (London, 1995), pp. 164–203
10. Jonathan Friedman, ‘Introduction’, in idem, ed., Consumption and identity (Chur, Switzerland, 1994), pp. 1–22.
11. Tiersten, ‘Redefining consumer culture’, p. 119
12. Friedman, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–3
13. Ben Fine and Ellen Leopold, ‘Consumerism and the Industrial Revolution’, Social History, 15 (1990), p. 151
14. Cf. Neil McKendrick, ‘Commercialisation and the economy’, in McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, Birth, p. 9.
15. J. O. Halliwell, Ancient inventories of furniture, pictures, tapestry, plate, etc. illustrative of the domestic manners of the English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1854)
16. F. G. Emmison, ‘Jacobean household inventories’, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 20 (1938)
17. Rachel Garrard, ‘English probate inventories and their use in studying the significance of the domestic interior, 1570–1700’, in Ad Van der Woude and Anton Schuurman, eds., Probate inventories: a new source for the historical study of wealth, material culture and agricultural development, A. A. G. Bijdragen, 23 (Utrecht, 1980), pp. 55–81
18. Lorna Weatherill, Consumer behaviour and material culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London, 1988)
19. Carole Shammas, The pre-industrial consumer in England and America (Oxford, 1990).
20. Friedman, ‘Introduction’, pp. 4, 15–17
21. Colin Campbell, ‘Understanding traditional and modern patterns of consumption in eighteenth-century England: a character-action approach’, in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption, p. 48.
22. A recent example being Joachim Voth, ‘Time use in eighteenth-century London: some evidence from the Old Bailey’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1996).
23. For example see Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming subjects: women, shopping and business in the eighteenth century (New York, 1997).
24. See also John Brewer and Susan Staves, eds., Early modern conceptions of property (London, 1994)
25. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, eds., The consumption of culture, 1600–1800: image, object, text (London, 1995).
26. Campbell, ‘Character-action approach’, pp. 43, 55.
27. Ruth Schwarz Cowan, ‘The consumption junction: a proposal for research strategies in the sociology of technology’, in W. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch, eds., The social construction of technological systems (London, 1989), p. 263.
28. See also Nigel Thrift and Paul Glennie, ‘Modernity, urbanism and modern consumption’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 10 (1992), pp. 423–443.
29. Ben Fine and Ellen Leopold, The world of consumption (London, 1993), pp. 4–7.
30. Arjun Appadurai, ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’, in idem, ed., The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 6–7, 13–14
31. Cf. Ben Fine, Michael Heasman, and Judith Wright, Consumption in the age of affluence: the world of food (London, 1996), pp. 66–69.
32. For example, Maxine Berg implies but does not specify the differences between the two categories: ‘Product innovation in core consumer industries in eighteenth-century Britain’, in Berg and Kristine Bruland, eds., Technological revolutions in Europe: historical perspectives (Cheltenham, 1998), pp. 138–157
33. Cf. John Styles, ‘Manufacturing, consumption and design in eighteenth-century England’, in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption, p. 543.
34. Marina Bianchi, ‘Consuming novelty: strategies for producing novelty in consumption’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 28 (1998), pp. 12–14
35. Styles, ‘Manufacturing’, pp. 358–359.
36. Victoria de Grazia, ‘Introduction’, in idem and Ellen Furlough, eds., The sex of things: gender and consumption in historical perspective (London, 1996), pp. 1–10.
37. Lorna Weatherill, ‘A possession of one's own: women and consumer behaviour in England, 1660–1760’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), pp. 131–156
38. Amanda Vickery, ‘Women and the world of goods: a Lancashire consumer and her possessions, 1751 -1781’, in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption, pp. 274–301
39. Marcia Pointon, Strategies for showing: women, possession and representation in English visual culture, 1665–1800 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 15–17.
40. Cf de Grazia, ‘ Introduction’.
41. De Grazia, ‘Changing consumption regimes’, in idem and Furlough, eds., Sex, p. 21.
42. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and property in early modern England (Cambridge, 1993), p. 222
43. Vickery, ‘World of goods’, pp. 283, 292–3
44. Martha C. Howell, ‘Fixing movables: gifts by testament in late medieval Douai’, Past and Present, 150 (1996), pp. 26–9, 35, 37.
45. Ruth Schwarz Cowan, More work for mother: household technology from the open hearth to the washing machine (London, 1989)
46. Caroline Davidson, A woman's work is never done: a history of housework in the British Isles, 1650–1950 (London, 1986)
47. Jan de Vries, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the industrious revolution’, Journal of Economic History, 54 (1994), pp. 255–262
48. de Grazia, ‘Introduction’, pp. 8–9.
49. Cowan, ‘Consumption junction’, pp. 261–280.
50. Tiersten, ‘Redefining consumer culture’, pp. 138–139.
51. For early modern notions of intimacy and spatial politics, see Laura Gowing, Domestic dangers: women, words and sex in early modern London (Oxford, 1996)
52. cf Amanda Vickery, ‘Sociability and intimacy in genteel culture’ (unpublished paper delivered at ‘Gender in History’, 62nd Anglo-American Conference of Historians, Institute of Historical Research, London, 2 July 1993)
53. Sasha Roberts, ‘Lying among the Classics: ritual and motif in elite Elizabethan and Jacobean beds’, in L. Gent, ed., Albion's classicism (London, 1995), pp. 325–357.
54. Thrift and Glennie, ‘Modernity’, and idem, ‘Modern consumption: theorising commodities and consumers’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 11 (1993), pp. 603–606.
55. J. D. Marshall, ‘The rise of the Cumbrian market town, 1660–1900’, Northern History, 69 (1983), pp. 138–139.
56. Weatherill, Consumer behaviour, pp. 56–57.
57. For example, Jennifer Melville's ongoing Cambridge doctoral study of domestic space in late seventeenth-century London; De Vries, ‘Industrial Revolution’, pp. 257, 261.
58. Karl E. Westhauser, ‘Friendship and family in early modern England: the sociability of Adam Eyre and Samuel Pepys’, Journal of Social History, 27 (1994), pp. 517–536
59. Vickery, ‘Sociability and intimacy’.
60. Thomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber III, ‘Introduction: the culture of the market’, in Haskell and Teichgraeber, eds., The culture of the market: historical essays, pbk edn (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 1–39.
61. The market's liminal characteristics are explored in Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds apart: the market and the theatre in Anglo-American thought, 1550–1750 (Cambridge, 1986).
62. Adrian Randall, Andrew Charlesworth, Richard Sheldon, and David Walsh, ‘Markets, market culture and popular protest in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland’, in Randall and Charlesworth, eds., Markets, market culture and popular protest in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996), pp. 8, 20–1.
63. Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The world of goods: towards an anthropology of consumption, rev. edn (London, 1996), pp. 82–85.
64. Lorna Weatherill, ed., The account book of Richard Latham, 1724–1767, Records of Social and Economic History, 15 (Oxford, 1990)
65. A. J. Vickery, ‘Women of the local elite in Lancashire, 1750-c. 1825’ (Ph.D. thesis, London, 1991).
66. Weatherill, Consumer behaviour, pp. 64–6, 164–5.
67. For more details of these accounts from the Browne MSS deposited at the Cumbria Record Office (Kendal), see S. M. Pennell, ‘The material culture of food in early modern England, circa 1650–1750’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1997), ch. 5.
68. Shammas, Pre-industrial consumer, pp. 78, 88–100, 111–12
69. Cf. Styles, ‘Manufacturing’, pp. 535–542.
70. Joel Mokyr, ‘Technological change, 1700–1830’
71. Nick Crafts, ‘The Industrial Revolution’, both in Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, eds., The economic history of Britain since 1700, 1: 1700–1860, rev. edn (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 12–43, 44–59
72. Mark Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England: the transformation of the agrarian economy, 1500–1850 (Cambridge, 1996).
73. John Styles, ‘Clothing the north: the supply of non-elite clothing in the eighteenth-century north of England’, Textile History, 25 (1994), pp. 139–166.
74. Campbell, ‘Capitalism’, pp. 28–9, 33, 46.
75. Tiersten, ‘Redefining consumer culture’
76. Cf. De Grazia, ‘Changing consumer regimes’, pp. 18–19.
77. Bernard Mandeville, The fable of the bees (Harmondsworth, 1970 edn),p. 68
78. Jonathan Barry, ‘Introduction’, in idem and Christopher Brooks, eds., The middling sort of people: culture, society and politics in England, 1550–1800 (London, 1994), pp. 17–27.
79. Appleby, ‘ Consumption in early modern social thought’, p. 164
80. Cf. Stana Nenadic, ‘Middle-rank consumers and domestic culture in Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1720–1840’, Past and Present, 145 (1994), pp. 122–156.
81. David Levine, ‘Consumer goods and capitalist modernisation’, Journal of Interdisplinary History, 22 (1991), p. 670.
82. Howell, ‘Fixing movables’, pp. 26–9, 35, 37
83. Nenadic, ‘Middle-rank consumers’, pp. 125, 132, 135
84. Pointon, Strategies of showing, pp. 48–49.
85. Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming subjects, pp. 37–51.
86. Craig Muldrew, ‘Interpreting the market: the ethics of credit and community relations in early modern England’, Social History, 18 (1993), pp. 163–183.
87. Donald Woodward, “‘Swords into ploughshares”: recycling in pre-industrial England’, Economic History Review, 38 (1985), pp. 175–191
88. Beverley Lemire, Fashion's favourite: the cotton trade and the consumer in Britain, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1991)
89. Nenadic, ‘Middle-rank consumers’.
90. Woodward, “‘Swords”’, p. 176
91. Lemire, Fashion's favourite, pp. 4–5, 61, 75–6.
92. Weatherill, Consumer behaviour, pp. 163–4, 196.
93. Friedman, ‘Introduction’, pp. 13, 21–2
94. see also Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming subjects, p. 13.
95. Bernard L. Herman, “‘The poor artisan's lodgings”’ (unpublished paper, given at Urban History Group Conference, Lancaster 28–9 March 1996)
96. Peter King,‘ Pauper inventories and the material life of the poor in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, in T. Hitchcock, P. King, and P. Sharpe, eds., Chronicling poverty: voices and strategies of the English poor, 1640–1840 (London, 1997), pp. 155–191.
97. Friedman, ‘Introduction’, pp. 21–22.
98. For a brief summary of anthropological and sociological approaches see Anne Murcott, Stephen Mennell, and Anneke H. van Otterloo, The sociology of food(Aldershot, 1992), pp. 1–34.
99. De Vries, ‘Industrial Revolution’, p. 259
100. Fine and Leopold, World of consumption, p. 88
101. Christopher Dyer, Standards of living in the later middle ages: social change in England, circa 1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 157–9, 169–75, 197–9.
102. Recent examples in these genres include Terence Scully, The art of cookery in the middle ages (Woodbridge, 1996), a new facsimile edition of The closet of the eminently learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. opened (first published 1669; Totnes, 1997)
103. Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The true history of chocolate (London, 1996).
104. Murcott, Mennell, and van Otterloo, Sociology, pp. 54–60, 65–7, 95–111
105. John Burnett, Plenty and want: a social history of diet in England from 1815 to the present day, rev. edn (London, 1979), pp. 336–337.
106. Matthew Johnson, Housing culture: traditional architecture in an English landscape (London, 1993)
107. idem, An archaeology of capitalism (Oxford, 1996)
108. Mary C. Beaudry and Anne E. Yentsch, The art and mystery of historical archaeology (Boca Raton, FL, 1993)
109. Charles Orser, A historical archaeology of the modern world (London, 1996).
110. See Sara Pennell, ‘The material culture of food in early modern England, circa 1650–1750’, in Sarah Tarlow and Susie West, eds., The familiar past? Archaeologies of Britain, 1550–1950 (London, 1999).
111. Brewer and Porter, ‘Introduction’, p. 2.
112. Murcott, Mennell, and van Otterloo, Sociology, pp. 115–116
113. Peter Borsay, The English urban renaissance: culture and society in the provincial town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 267–283
114. [Edward (Ned) Ward], The London-Spy compleat. In eighteen parts (2 vols., London, [c. 1700]).
115. P. Grainger, ‘James Jackson's diary, 1650–1683’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, new series 21 (1921), pp. 113–114.
116. Cf. Felicity Heal, Hospitality in early modern England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 189–90, 388.
117. Cf. Appleby, ‘Consumption in early modern social thought’.
118. William Bernard Rabenn, ‘Hospital diets in eighteenth-century England’, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 30 (1954), pp. 1216–1221
119. T. V. Hitchcock, ‘The English workhouse: a study in institutional poor relief in selected counties, 1696–1750’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford 1985), pp. 93, 139, 238–9
120. K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the labouring poor: social change and agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 17, 166–78.
121. For diets and entitlement, see Brian S. Turner, ‘The government of the body: medical regimens and the rationalisation of diet’, British Journal of Sociology, 33 (1982), pp. 254–269
122. John Walter, ‘the social economy of dearth in early modern England’, in Walter and Roger Schofield, eds., Famine, disease and the social order in early modern society (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 75–128
123. Fine, Heasman, and Wright, World of food, pp. 275–276.
124. Cf. Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption, p. 7.