At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, C.1650-1850
(Paperback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, C.1650-1850
By (Author) Joseph Harley
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
29th April 2026
United Kingdom
Classifications
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Social and cultural history
Poverty and precarity
Physical Properties
Paperback
272
Width 170mm, Height 240mm
Description
This book opens the doors to the homes of the forgotten poor and traces the goods they owned before, during and after the industrial revolution (c. 16501850). Using a vast and diverse range of sources, it gets to the very heart of what it meant to be 'poor' by examining the homes of the impoverished and mapping how numerous household goods became more widespread. As the book argues, poverty did not necessarily equate to owning very little and living in squalor. In fact, its novel findings show that most of the poor strove to improve their domestic spheres and that their demand for goods was so great that it was a driving force of the industrial revolution.
Reviews
'This is a fabulous addition to the fields of material culture, consumption, and economic history during the period 16501850.' - CHOICE Reviews -- .
Author Bio
Joseph Harley is a Senior Lecturer in History at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
