Publication:

Polite consumption: shopping in eighteenth century England (2002)

Author(s): Berry HM

    Abstract: Shopping was increasingly seen as a potentially pleasurable activity for middling and upper sorts in Hanoverian England, a distinctive yet everyday part of life, especially in London. This survey considers the emergence of a polite shopping culture at this time, and presents a `browse-bargain' model as a framework for considering contemporary references to shopping in written records and literary texts. The decline of polite shopping is charted with reference to the rise of cash-only businesses at the end of the century, and the shift towards a more hurried and impersonal form of shopping noted by early nineteenth-century shopkeepers, assistants and customers.

      • Date: 2002
      • Journal: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
      • Volume: Sixth series
      • Issue: 12
      • Pages: 375-394
      • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
      • Publication type: Article
      • Bibliographic status: Published

      Keywords: history shopping eighteenth century

      Staff

      Professor Helen Berry
      Professor of British History