Jon Stobart and Johanna Ilmakunnas bring together a range of scholars from across mainland Europe and the UK to examine luxury and taste in early modern Europe.

In the 18th century, debates raged about the economic, social and moral impacts of luxury, whilst taste was viewed as a refining influence and a marker of rank and status. This book takes a fresh, comparative approach to these ideas, drawing together new scholarship to examine three related areas in a wide variety of European contexts. Firstly, the deployment of luxury goods in displays of status and how these practices...

After four decades of substantial scholarly work, much is now known about women s paid work, their involvement in pecuniary pursuits and their role in the economy in general in the European past. Yet despite this advance, the received image of economically active and career-oriented women in the past still appears slightly unbalanced as much of the research has focused on poor women and women of popular classes who worked because they had to work. This new volume enriches and updates the received image of economically active women in the European past by focussing upon women entering the...