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POLITE CONSUMPTION: SHOPPlNG IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2002

Helen Berry
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Abstract

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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 12 , December 2002 , pp. 375 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society2002

References

1 I should like to thank Scott Ashley, Jeremy Boulton, Anthony Fletcher, Elizabeth Foyster, Andrew Kaye, Peter Rushton and Roey Sweet for their generous help with additional comments and references.