A delightful and fascinating social history of Victorians at leisure, told
through the letters, diaries, journals and novels of nineteenth-century men and
women, from the author of the bestselling 'The Victorian House'. Imagine a world
where only one in five people owns a book, where just one in ten has a knife or
a fork - a world where five people out of every six do not own a cup to hold a
hot drink. That was what England was like in the early eighteenth century. Yet
by the close of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution had brought
with it not just factories, railways, mines and machines but also fashion,
travel, leisure and pleasure. Leisure became an industry - a cornucopia of
excitement for the masses - and it was spread by newspapers, advertising,
promotions and publicity -- all of which were eighteenth-century creations. It
was Josiah Wedgwood and his colleagues who invented money-back guarantees, free
delivery and celebrity endorsements.
New technology such as the railways brought audiences to ever-more-elaborate
extravaganzas, whether it was theatrical spectaculars with breathtaking
pyrotechnics and hundreds of extras - 'hippodramas' recreating the battle of
Waterloo - or the Great Exhibition itself, proudly displaying 'the products of
all quarters of the globe' under twenty-two acres of the sparkling 'Crystal
Palace'. In 'Consuming Passions', Flanders explores this dramatic revolution in
science, technology and industry - and how a world of thrilling sensation,
lavish spectacle and unimaginable theatricality was born.
Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. From Arcadia to Arcade: The Great Exhibition
2. 'A Nation of Shopkeepers': The Eighteenth-Century Shop
3. The Ladies' (and Gents') Paradise: The Nineteenth-Century Shop
4. Read All About It: Buying the News
5. Penny a Line: Books and the Reading Public
6. To Travel Hopefully: Holidays and Tourism
7. The Greatest Shows on Earth?
8. Penny Plain, Tuppence Coloured: The Theatrical Spectacular
9. Going for a Song: The Music Market
10. Sporting Life
11. Vicions of Sugar Plums: A Christmas Soda
Appendix 1. Currency
Appendix 2. Department Stores (a Other Large Shop) and Their Opening Hours
Appendix 3. Holidays 'Kept at the Exchequer, Stamp-Office, Excise-Office,
Custom-House, Bank, East-India, and South-Sea House'
Select Bibliography
Notes
Index
Reviews:
'A fascinating, bewildering, marvel-crammed quest' - Guardian
'Pure pleasure from beginning to end ... this book is as packed with
goodies as a rich Victorian Dundee cake ... pure joy' - A. Wilson, Daily Mail
