In this vivid reconstruction of life in a seventeenth-century gentry household, the authors delve into the details of everyday life: how did a large, wealthy household in the English countryside acquire the goods and services it needed and wanted? Was household consumption an exclusively female sphere, or did men play an important role, too?

Lady Alice Le Strange of Hunstanton in Norfolk kept a continuous series of household accounts from 1610-1654. Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths have used the Le Stranges' rich archive to reconstruct the material aspects of family life. This involves looking not only at purchases, but also at home production and gifts; and not only at the luxurious, but at the everyday consumption of food and medical care. Consumption is viewed not just as a set of objects owned, but as a process involving household management, acquisition and appropriation, a process that created and reinforced social links with craftsmen, servants, labourers, and the local community. It is argued that the county gentry provide a missing link in histories of consumption: connecting the fashions of London and the royal court, with those of middling strata of rural England. Recent writing has focused upon the transformation of consumption patterns in the eighteenth century. Here the earlier context is illuminated and, instead of tradition and stability, we find constant change and innovation. Issues of gender permeate the study. Consumption is often viewed as a female activity and the book looks in detail at who managed the provisioning, purchases, and work within the household, how spending on sons and daughters differed, and whether men and women attacheddifferent cultural values to household goods. This single household's economy provides a window into some of most significant cultural and economic issues of early modern England: innovations in trade, retail and production, the basis of gentry power, social relations in the countryside, and the genderingof family life.

How did 17th-century families in England perceive their health care needs? What household resources were available for medical self-help? To what extent did households make up remedies based on medicinal recipes? Drawing on previously unpublished household papers ranging from recipes to accounts and letters, this original account shows how health and illness were managed on a day-to-day basis in a variety of 17th-century households. It reveals the extent of self-help used by families, explores their favourite remedies and analyses differences in approaches to medical matters. Anne Stobart illuminates cultures of health care amongst women and men, showing how 'kitchin physick' related to the business of medicine, which became increasingly commercial and professional in the 18th century.

Uncovers sources from the parish pauper to the gentlewoman to consider relationships with clothing across the social hierarchy in the long eighteenth century.Descriptions of women's clothing increasingly circulated across textual genres and beyond in eighteenth-century England. This book explores the significance of these descriptions across a range of sources including wills, newspapers, accounts, court records, and the records of the old poor law.Attention has rested on women literate and wealthy enough to leave behind textual or material traces, but this book ranges from the parish pauper to the gentlewoman to consider descriptive languages, rhetorical strategies, and relationships with clothing across the social hierarchy. It explores how women described their own clothing, but also looks at how it was described by overseers, family members, retailers, and even strangers. It shows that we must look beyond isolated descriptions to how, why, and who was describing clothing to understand its role. Chapters uncover themes of material obligation, expectation, and entitlement.This book also contributes to our understanding of the material literacy of eighteenth-century consumers. It traces the role of textual description in this dissemination of knowledge about clothing, but also alerts us to what was happening beyond the written word, drawing attention to the communication of multisensory information. Above all, it demonstrates that there remains much still to be unpicked from textual sources.ncover themes of material obligation, expectation, and entitlement.This book also contributes to our understanding of the material literacy of eighteenth-century consumers. It traces the role of textual description in this dissemination of knowledge about clothing, but also alerts us to what was happening beyond the written word, drawing attention to the communication of multisensory information. Above all, it demonstrates that there remains much still to be unpicked from textual sources.ncover themes of material obligation, expectation, and entitlement.This book also contributes to our understanding of the material literacy of eighteenth-century consumers. It traces the role of textual description in this dissemination of knowledge about clothing, but also alerts us to what was happening beyond the written word, drawing attention to the communication of multisensory information. Above all, it demonstrates that there remains much still to be unpicked from textual sources.ncover themes of material obligation, expectation, and entitlement.This book also contributes to our understanding of the material literacy of eighteenth-century consumers. It traces the role of textual description in this dissemination of knowledge about clothing, but also alerts us to what was happening beyond the written word, drawing attention to the communication of multisensory information. Above all, it demonstrates that there remains much still to be unpicked from textual sources.

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.

Featuring detailed analyses of clothing culture in 17th-century provincial Sussex, this original study draws on previously unexploited sources to create an intimate and nuanced portrait of people and their clothes. An introductory chapter uses 17th-century literature to identify and explore contemporary ideas about clothing, the individual and society, as well as the relationship between London and the provinces and the causes and consequences of conspicuous clothing consumption. Subsequent chapters look at the production, distribution and acquisition of clothing in Sussex and the participation of consumers in these processes; the role of London as a centre of fashionable clothing consumption and the experience of wealthier consumers in shopping there; the clothing worn by individual men, women and older children of the 'middle' and 'better' sort and the extent to which they participated in contemporary, London-driven, fashion culture. A final chapter examines the clothing worn by the poor, including vagrants, parish paupers and the 'labouring' poor. With over 40 images Clothing in 17th-Century Provincial England offers a new window onto early modern experiences of clothing.

This book opens the doors to the homes of the forgotten poor and traces the goods they owned before, during and after the industrial revolution (c. 1650–1850). Using a vast and diverse range of sources, it gets to the very heart of what it meant to be ‘poor’ by examining the homes of the impoverished and mapping how numerous household goods became more widespread. As the book argues, poverty did not necessarily equate to owning very little and living in squalor. In fact, its novel findings show that most of the poor strove to improve their domestic spheres and that their demand for goods was so great that it was a driving force of the industrial revolution.