Polite consumption: Shopplng in eighteenth-century England

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. © 2002 Royal Historical Society.