So clean : Lord Leverhulme, soap and civilisation / Brian Lewis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lewis, Brian, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Leverhulme, William Hesketh Lever, Viscount, 1851-1925.

Industrialists--Great Britain--Biography.

Industrialists.

Philanthropists--Great Britain--Biography.

Philanthropists.

Soap trade--Great Britain.

Soap trade.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 246 pages) : illustrations; digital file(s).

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press, 2008.

Manchester, UK : Manchester University Press, [2017]

System Details:

data file

Summary:

This book is an unorthodox biography of William Hesketh Lever, 1st Lord Leverhulme (1851-1925), the founder of the Lever Brothers' Sunlight Soap empire. Unlike previous biographies, which have focused on the man's life story and eccentricities, or just considered one aspect of his career, So clean places him squarely in his social and cultural context and is fully informed by recent historical scholarship. Much more than a warts-and-all biography, the book uses Lever as an entry-point for contextualized and comparative essays on the history of advertising; on factory paternalism, town planning, the Garden City movement and their ramifications across the twentieth century; and on colonialism and forced labour in the Belgian Congo and the South Pacific. It concludes with a discussion of his extraordinary attempt, in his final years, to transform crofting and fishing in the Outer Hebrides.Written in an engaging and accessible style, So Clean will appeal to academics and students working in business, social, cultural and imperial history.

Contents:

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

1. The Napoleon of soap

2. Soft soap and soap operas

3. Sunlight for the unwashed

4. Sunlight for savages

5. Twilight

Select bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [226]-240) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-5261-3043-2

OCLC:

1085658934