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REVIEWS
| Luxury & Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain. By Maxine Berg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xviii plus 373 pp. $45/cloth).
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| In the seminal work The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (1982) Neil McKendrick articulated what was tantamount to a new period in English history, one of a consumer revolution.1 Although others had reckoned with the notion, none had used his kind of hyperbole—a "consumer boom" which "reached revolutionary proportions"— in describing England late in the eighteenth century. He noted that it entailed "such a convulsion of getting and spending, such an eruption of new prosperity, and such an explosion of new production and marketing techniques, that a greater proportion of the population than in any previous society in human history was able to enjoy the pleasures of buying consumer goods." |
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That McKendrick's driven shoppers spent not only for "necessities, but decencies, and even luxuries" encapsulates the theme Maxine Berg pursues so expertly in Luxury & Pleasure. In it she utilizes the tools of cultural and social as well as economic and technological history in exploring "the invention, making, and buying of new, semi-luxury, and fashionable consumer goods during the eighteenth century (p. 15)." Her introductory chapters (Part I)— subsumed under the broader heading of Luxury, Quality, and Delight—treat the "Delights of Luxury"; "Goods from the East" (silks, calicoes, chinaware, lacquer cabinets, and the like) and "Art and Invention" (which contains a superb account of nations engaged in design competition). Berg devotes Part II to manufactures—notably to that of elegant flint glass, porcelain, and metal objects, all of which served as props for genteel living and for those who esteemed "politeness" above all other human traits. In the final segment Berg explores shopping and marketing in "Men and Women of the Middling Classes: Acquisitiveness and Self-Respect; "'Shopping as a Place to Go': Fashion, Shopping, and Advertising"; and "Mercantile Theatres: British Commodities and American Consumers." While these labels effectively denote chapter substance, they hardly convey the verve of the author's presentation and delightful surprises she brings to amplify the narrative of consumption. |
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