Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750-1800

ISBN-13: 9780198202370 / Angielski / Twarda / 1992 / 344 str.

James Raven

Opis

In this broad-ranging interdisciplinary study, Raven explores literature and the book trade in the second half of the eighteenth century. Based on intensive research into the production and sale of literature ranging from novels and periodical essays to courtesy books and popular manuals, the book examines the representation of the newly wealthy. Raven challenges the notion that prejudice against the businessman was a late nineteenth-century phenomenon. He shows how, during a period of often bewildering change and instability, a competitive literature industry led reaction against excessive consumer spending, contributed to the definition of legitimate economic behavior, and stimulated unprecedented attacks upon the social presumption of tradesmen. A scholarly and stimulating study, this book makes important contributions to debates on the supposed decline of the British industrial spirit class.

Recenzje

What the reader will find...is scholarly analysis. Raven's study is sure to be an important resource, both for its methodology and as a rich hoard of information. Scholars interested in business and econmoic history, publishing history and popular culture in the late eighteenth century england will find that the considerable intellectual assets of Judging New Wealth will genreously repay their labours.

O autorze

Raven is the author of British Fiction 1750-1770: A Chronological Check List of Prose Fiction (Delaware University Press, 1987) and The Commercialization of the Book (CUP, forthcoming).