The Business of Everyday Life Gender, Practice and Social Politics in England, c.1600-1900

From 1600 to 1900, a growing consumerism fired the English economy, shaping the priorities of individuals, and determining the allocation of resources within families. Everyday business might mean making a trip to the pawnbroker, giving a loan to a trusted friend or selling off a coat, all to make ends meet. Both women and men engaged in this daily budgeting, but women's roles were especially important in achieving some level of comfort and avoiding penury. In some communities, the daily practices in place in the seventeenth century persisted into the twentieth, while other groups adopted new ways, such as using numbers to chart domestic affairs and turning to the savings banks that appeared in the nineteenth century. In the material world of the past and in the changing habits of earlier generations lie crucial turning points. This book explores these previously under-researched patterns and practices that gave shape to modern consumer society.

Beverly Lemire is Professor of History and Henry Marshall Tory Chair at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Introduction: everyday practice and plebeian affairs * Gender, the informal economy and the development of capitalism in England, 1650–1850; or, credit among the common people * Credit for the poor and the failed experiment of the charitable corporation, c. 1700–50 * Shifting currency: the practice and economy of the secondhand trade, c. 1600–1850 * Refashioning society: expressions of popular consumerism and dress, c. 1660–1820 * Savings culture, provident consumerism and the advent of modern consumer society, c. 1780–1900 * Accounting for the household: gender and the culture of household management, c. 1600–1900 * Conclusion * Bibliography * Index