Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England

Sara Pennell is an independent scholar, having most recently been Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Greenwich, UK. She is the co-editor, along with Michelle DiMeo, of Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550-1800 (2013) and author of The Birth of the English Kitchen (Bloomsbury, 2016).Jon Stobart, FRHS, is Professor of Social History at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy (Bloomsbury, 2025) and editor of The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 (Bloomsbury, 2020), A Cultural History of Shopping, 6 volumes (Bloomsbury, 2022), and co-editor, with Christopher J. Berry, of A Cultural History of Luxury in the Age of Enlightenment (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresList of TablesPrologueIntroductionChapter 1. Representations: events, people and placesInterlude 1. David Couty’s trade cardChapter 2. Auctioneers: careers, premises and businesses Interlude 2. Jane Austen’s writing slopeChapter 3. Things: everyday and extraordinaryInterlude 3. George Hamond Lucy’s marble tableChapter 4. Promotion: the language of persuasionInterlude 4. The Reverend Charles Tonyn’s auction catalogueChapter 5. Practices: selling and buying second-hand Interlude 5. Jane and Thomas Carlyle’s ‘immeasurable everlasting sofa’Chapter 6. Motivation: necessity, thrift and distinctionConclusionBibliography

The book is impressive in its arguments and in its depth of sources. Gathering and marshalling a vast array of material related to the trade in second-hand goods, it extends coverage from the ‘consumer revolution’ of the eighteenth century to the Victorian period.