New book: Consumption and the Country House
John Stobart & Mark Rothery: Consumption and the Country House
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 the landed aristocracy of Georgian England during the so-called consumer revolution of the eighteenth century.
The book offers an accessible introduction to the history of the consumer revolution, the Georgian aristocracy, and the country house. It emphasizes the processes and spatiality of consumption which reanimates the country house. It connetcs the consumption of the landed aristocracy directly to debates about consumer transformation in the 18th century. It takes a broad approach, linking social, economic, and cultural history and it provides detailed empirical research on hitherto unexplored family archives.