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Polite consumption: shopping in eighteenth century England

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Helen Berry

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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.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Berry HM

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Year: 2002

Volume: Sixth series

Issue: 12

Pages: 375-394

Print publication date: 01/01/2002

Date deposited: 14/12/2007

ISSN (print): 0080-4401

ISSN (electronic): 1474-0648

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0080440102000154

DOI: 10.1017/S0080440102000154

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