Most Necessary Luxuries

Most Necessary Luxuries PDF Author: Ronald M. Berger
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271043432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
Between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries, gilds were the basis of industrial and commercial organization in England. Surprisingly, however, the disappearance of gilds has been neglected by historians. In The Most Necessary Luxuries, Ronald Berger uses the Mercers' Company of Coventry to follow the eclipse of an entire trading community in one of England's premier medieval cities and manufacturing centers. Berger charts the difficulties faced by mercers and grocers in a growing capitalist economy and discusses their unsuccessful efforts to maintain their prosperity. The book helps to explain both the development of a new urban system and the rise of shops in Midland England. It shows how shops replaced markets and fairs and uses the economics of the fashion trades to explain why provincial shops could not overcome the competition put forward by the metropolis. The Most Necessary Luxuries unites the fields of social, urban, and economic history to explain the decline of a medieval city, the evolution of the English urban middle class, and the transformation from an amalgam of wealthy wholesalers and distributors of luxury goods to an association of mere shopkeepers. It demonstrates that the rise of commercial capitalism between 1550 and 1700 in England undermined the medieval economy that was based on protected markets, restrictive trading practices, and entrenched oligarchies that dominated towns.

Most Necessary Luxuries

Most Necessary Luxuries PDF Author: Ronald M. Berger
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271043432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
Between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries, gilds were the basis of industrial and commercial organization in England. Surprisingly, however, the disappearance of gilds has been neglected by historians. In The Most Necessary Luxuries, Ronald Berger uses the Mercers' Company of Coventry to follow the eclipse of an entire trading community in one of England's premier medieval cities and manufacturing centers. Berger charts the difficulties faced by mercers and grocers in a growing capitalist economy and discusses their unsuccessful efforts to maintain their prosperity. The book helps to explain both the development of a new urban system and the rise of shops in Midland England. It shows how shops replaced markets and fairs and uses the economics of the fashion trades to explain why provincial shops could not overcome the competition put forward by the metropolis. The Most Necessary Luxuries unites the fields of social, urban, and economic history to explain the decline of a medieval city, the evolution of the English urban middle class, and the transformation from an amalgam of wealthy wholesalers and distributors of luxury goods to an association of mere shopkeepers. It demonstrates that the rise of commercial capitalism between 1550 and 1700 in England undermined the medieval economy that was based on protected markets, restrictive trading practices, and entrenched oligarchies that dominated towns.

Necessary Luxuries

Necessary Luxuries PDF Author: Matt Erlin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470439
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
Matt Erlin considers books and the culture around books during this period, focusing specifically on Germany where literature, and the fine arts in general, were the subject of soul-searching debates over the legitimacy of luxury.

A Necessary Luxury

A Necessary Luxury PDF Author: Julie E. Fromer
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821418289
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Get Book Here

Book Description
In A Necessary Luxury Julie E. Fromer analyzes tea histories, advertisements, and nine Victorian novels, including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Wuthering Heights, and Portrait of a Lady. Fromer demonstrates how tea functions as an arbiter of taste and middle-class respectability.

Sugar and Spice

Sugar and Spice PDF Author: Jon Stobart
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191640026
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
Consumers in eighteenth-century England were firmly embedded in an expanding world of goods, one that incorporated a range of novel foods (tobacco, chocolate, coffee, and tea) and new supplies of more established commodities, including sugar, spices, and dried fruits. Much has been written about the attraction of these goods, which went from being novelties or expensive luxuries in the mid-seventeenth century to central elements of the British diet a century or so later. They have been linked to the rise of Britain as a commercial and imperial power, whilst their consumption is seen as transforming many aspects of British society and culture, from mealtimes to gender identity. Despite this huge significance to ideas of consumer change, we know remarkably little about the everyday processes through which groceries were sold, bought, and consumed. In tracing the lines of supply that carried groceries from merchants to consumers, Sugar and Spice reveals how changes in retailing and shopping were central to the broader transformation of consumption and consumer practices, but also questions established ideas about the motivations underpinning consumer choices. It demonstrates the dynamic nature of eighteenth-century retailing; the importance of advertisements in promoting sales and shaping consumer perceptions, and the role of groceries in making shopping an everyday activity. At the same time, it shows how both retailers and their customers were influenced by the practicalities and pleasures of consumption. They were active agents in consumer change, shaping their own practices rather than caught up in a single socially-inclusive cultural project such as politeness or respectability.

Necessary Luxuries

Necessary Luxuries PDF Author: Topher Payne
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 9781436357920
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
NECESSARY LUXURIES Topher Payne just wants a little peace, and to settle down with someone nice. Both seem to consistently elude him. Always leaving the house with the best of intentions, he somehow manages to humiliate himself in front of Martha Stewart, wander onto a porn set, steal a cat, get in an alley fight in Ireland, march with gay Native Americans in the New York Pride Parade, and serve as best man at a Las Vegas transsexual wedding. Topher tries to hold out hope for a Mr. Right who'll accept his life of almost-manageable chaos. Along the way he discovers that maintaining a happy life takes more than the bare essentials everyone requires a few necessary luxuries.

The Keystone

The Keystone PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1516

Get Book Here

Book Description


Atkinson's Evening Post and Philadelphia Saturday News

Atkinson's Evening Post and Philadelphia Saturday News PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1542

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Chemistry of Common Life

The Chemistry of Common Life PDF Author: James Finlay Weir Johnston
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chemistry
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Canadian Magazine

The Canadian Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 770

Get Book Here

Book Description


Necessary Luxuries

Necessary Luxuries PDF Author: Matt Erlin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470420
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
The consumer revolution of the eighteenth century brought new and exotic commodities to Europe from abroad—coffee, tea, spices, and new textiles to name a few. Yet one of the most widely distributed luxury commodities in the period was not new at all, and was produced locally: the book. In Necessary Luxuries, Matt Erlin considers books and the culture around books during this period, focusing specifically on Germany where literature, and the fine arts in general, were the subject of soul-searching debates over the legitimacy of luxury in the modern world.Building on recent work done in the fields of consumption studies as well as the New Economic Criticism, Erlin combines intellectual-historical chapters (on luxury as a concept, luxury editions, and concerns about addictive reading) with contextualized close readings of novels by Campe, Wieland, Moritz, Novalis, and Goethe. As he demonstrates, artists in this period were deeply concerned with their status as luxury producers. The rhetorical strategies they developed to justify their activities evolved in dialogue with more general discussions regarding new forms of discretionary consumption. By emphasizing the fragile legitimacy of the fine arts in the period, Necessary Luxuries offers a fresh perspective on the broader trajectory of German literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, recasting the entire period in terms of a dynamic unity, rather than simply as a series of literary trends and countertrends.