Styles

2007 · 184697 — New Haven: Yale University Press 2007. Hardcover. VG/VG ex-library with labels and stamps on spine block inside front and rear covers and title page verso. Pages are otherwise clean and clear. Red cloth boards with gilt spine lettering; color illustrated dj mylar cover; color illustrated end papers and color illustrated frontispiece; xi 432 pp illustrated throughout in bw and color. "Material things transformed the lives of ordinary English men and women between the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the Great Reform Act of 1832. Tea and sugar the fruits of British mercantile and colonial expansion transformed their diets. Pendulum clocks and Staffordshire pottery the products of British manufacturing ingenuity enriched their homes. But it was in their clothes that ordinary people enjoyed the greatest transformation in their material lives. In calico gowns and muslin neckerchiefs in wigs and silver-plated shoe buckles they flaunted the fruits of the nation's commercial prosperity. This book retrieves the unknown story of ordinary consumers in eighteenth-century England and what they wore."--Jacket. Contents include: Introduction: Consuming the eighteenth century -- Travellers' tales : nation and region -- What the people wore -- Clothing biographies -- Keeping up appearances -- Changing clothes -- Fashioning time : watches -- Fashion's favourite : cotton -- Clothing provincial England : fabrics -- Clothing provincial England : garments -- Clothing the metropolis -- The view from above -- The view from below -- Budgeting for clothes -- Clothes and the life-cycle -- Involuntary consumption : prizes gifts and charity -- Involuntary consumption : the parish poor -- Involuntary consumption : servants -- Popular fashion. Yale University Press hardcover books