This is the first major study of a neglected yet extremely significant subject: the London middle classes in the period between 1660 and 1730, a period in which they created a society and economy that can be seen with hindsight to have ushered in the modern world. Using a wealth of material from contemporary sources - including wills, business papers, inventories, marriage contracts, divorce hearings, and the writings of Daniel Defoe and Samuel Pepys - Peter Earle presents a fully rounded picture of the "middling sort of people," getting to the hearts of their lives as men and women struggling for success in the biggest, richest, and most middle-class city in contemporary Europe.He examines in fascinating and convincing detail the business life of Londoners, from apprenticeship through the problems and potential rewards of different occupational groups, going on to look at middle-class family, social, political and material life - from relationships with spouses, children, servants, and neighbours, to food and clothes and furniture, to sickness, death, and burial.
Stimulating, scholarly, and constantly illuminating, this book is an important and impressive contribution to English social history.
- ISBN10 0413519104
- ISBN13 9780413519108
- Publish Date May 1989
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 December 1992
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Methuen Publishing Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 448
- Language English