Luxury in the Eighteenth Century

MAXINE BERG is Professor of History and Director of the Warwick Eighteenth-Century Centre at the University of Warwick. She directed the Luxury Project 1997-2000, and is now director of the Leverhulme Art and Industry Project. She is the co-editor, with Helen Clifford, of Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe 1650-1850 (1999), and author of The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820 (1994). She is completing a book entitled The People's Delight: Modern Luxury in Eighteenth-Century England. - ELIZABETH EGER is Research Fellow in the Department of English, University of Liverpool. She was the Luxury Research Fellow in the Warwick Eighteenth-Century Centre. She is co-editor of Women and the Public Sphere (2000), editor of The Selected Writings of Elizabeth Montagu (1999). She completed a thesis, now being revised for publication, on The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain: Women, Reason and Literary Community in Eighteenth-Century England.

'This volume significantly advances our knowledge of the topic and makes clear, once and for all, that a decisive change occurred in the long eighteenth century. It also...points the way forward to an approach that combines an account of values and beliefs with the detailed analysis of specific material goods.' - John Brewer, John and Marion Sullivan University Professor, University of Chicago, USA 'In this volume late twentieth-century scholars fasten with enthusiasm on both the practicalities that created evermore consumer goods and exalted luxury, and on the philosophical controversies and imaginative literature that it endangered. They marry literature and history in a most stimulating collection...This is a thought-provoking book...The text establishes an impressive network of connections not only between literature and history, but with moral philosophy and aesthetics as well. It will surely spark more investigations of consumerism and luxury.' - Joan Thirsk, Literature and History '[In] Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger's excellent new collection of essays, Luxury in the Eighteenth Century...we find a subtle historical argument that describes how the concept of luxury emerged from inherited moral and religious discourses, to become an integral part of our understanding of modernity' - David Mazella, Eighteenth Century Studies 'Luxury in the Eighteenth Century provides both a synopsis of existing literature on the subject and a major step forward in tis analysis. It is an important academic landmark. It is refreshing that Asian and American viewpoints are embraced, adding depth and an important corrective to our understanding of the English 'long eighteenth century'.' - Helen Clifford, Journal of Design History

• Introduction PART ONE: DEBATES The Rise and Fall of the Luxury Debates Mandeville, Rousseau and the Political Economy of Fantasy Luxury in the Dutch Golden Ages in Theory and Practice Aestheticizing the Critique of Luxury: Smollett's Humphry Clinker PART TWO: DELECTABLE GOODS Furnishing Discourses: Readings of a Writing Desk in Eighteenth-Century France The Circulation of Luxury Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris: Social Distribution and an Alternative Currency Custom or Consumption? Plebeian Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England PART THREE: BEAUTY, TASTE AND SENSIBILITY From the Moral Mound to the Material Maze: Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty From Luxury to Comfort and Back Again: Landscape Architecture and the Cottage in Britain and America Vase Mania PART FOUR: A FEMALE VICE? WOMEN AND LUXURY Performing Roxane: The Oriental Woman as the Sign of Luxury in Eighteenth-Century Fictions Luxury, Satire and Prostitute Narratives Luxury, Industry and Charity: Bluestocking Culture Displayed PART FIVE: LUXURY AND THE EXOTIC Luxuries or Not? Consumption of Silk and Porcelain in Eighteenth-Century China Luxury, Clothing and Race in Spanish America Asian Luxuries and the Making of the European Consumer Revolution