The middling sort : commerce, gender, and the family in England, 1680-1780 / Margaret R. Hunt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hunt, Margaret R., 1953- author.

Contributor:

American Council of Learned Societies.

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Middle class--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Middle class.

Middle class--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Middle class families--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Middle class families.

Middle class families--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 343 p. )

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, California : University of California Press, [1996]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

To be one of "the middling sort" in urban England in the late seventeenth or eighteenth century was to live a life tied, one way or another, to the world of commerce. In a lively study that combines narrative and alternately poignant and hilarious anecdotes with convincing analysis, Margaret R. Hunt offers a view of middling society during the hundred years that separated the Glorious Revolution from the factory age. Thanks to her exploration of many family papers and court records, Hunt is able to examine what people thought, felt, and valued. She finds that early capitalism and early modern family life were far more insecure than their "classical" models supposed. Commercial needs and social needs coincided to a large extent. The family is central to Hunt's story, and she shows how financial struggles brought conflict, ambiguity, and tension to the home. She investigates the way gender intertwined with class and family hierarchy and the way many businesses survived as precarious successes, secured through the sacrifices made by female as well as male family members. The Middling Sort offers a dynamic portrait of a society struggling to minimize the considerable social and psychic dislocation that accompanied England's launch of a full-scale market economy.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES ON THE TEXT

Introduction: The Middling Sort

CHAPTER ONE. Capital, Credit, and the Family

CHAPTER TWO. A Generation of Vipers: Prudential Virtue and the Sons of Trade

CHAPTER THREE. To Read, Knit, and Spin: Middling Daughters and the Family Economy

CHAPTER FOUR. "Just in All Their Dealings": Middling Men and the Reformation of Manners, 1670-1739

CHAPTER FIVE. Eighteenth-Century Middling Women and Trade

CHAPTER SIX. The Bonds of Matrimony and the Spirit of Capitalism

CHAPTER SEVEN. Print Culture and the Middling Classes: Mapping the World of Commerce

CHAPTER EIGHT. Private Order and Political Virtue: Domesticity and the Ruling Class

Conclusion

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

NOTES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-319) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Okt 2020)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780520916944

0520916948

9780585062853

0585062854

OCLC:

1202625431