Wanting and Having

Peter Gurney teaches British Social History at the University of Essex

‘Consumption and democracy are central to Peter Gurney’s compelling study. His claim is that historians of popular politics and historians of consumption have failed to engage deeply with each other, distorting our understanding of Chartism, the Anti-Corn Law League, and Gladstonian liberalism.’Brian Lewis, McGill University, Journal of Modern History‘Excellent new book…Gurney’s work is the first to demonstrate that the construction of the consumer was also an important political device from the early nineteenth century…Thoroughly researched and well argued, this book should be on the reading list of everyone with an interest in the history of consumption as well as politics and the poor in Victorian Britain…A strongly argued and original book, well grounded in extensive primary research and a thorough grasp of secondary work in the field. Professional historians and students on the nineteenth-century alike should find it illuminating and engaging…Gurney’s ideas have a wider relevance.’ Jane Hamlett, Royal Holloway, University of London, Journal of Social History, Volume 50, No 2, Winter 2016‘The intellectual breadth, the historiographical ambition and the rigorous analytical framework of this volume will ensure that no scholar of the poor law, of Chartism, of the Anti-Corn Law League, or indeed of debates about the consumer and consumption in nineteenth-century Britain, will want to ignore its insights or avoid confronting the challenges it throws down to orthodox readings of nineteenth-century society.’Chris Williams, Cardiff University, Social History, June 2016‘The book willbe essential reading for historians of Chartism, free trade and the poor law inparticular.’Henry Miller, The English HistoricalReview

• 1. ‘A new order of things’: mapping popular politics onto consumption2. ‘Rejoicing in potatoes’: the politics of consumption during the ‘Hungry Forties’3. ‘The Andover Cannibalism’: popular entitlement and the New Poor Law4. ‘Yours in the cause of Democracy’: democratic discourse and the Chartist challenge5. ‘Consumers of their own productions’: popular radicalism and consumer organising6. ‘Please, sir, I want some more’: Dickens on working-class scarcity and middle-class excess7. ‘The Sublime of the Bazaar’: the religion of free trade and the making of modern consumerism8. ‘The lion turned into a lamb’: the consumer politics of popular liberalismIndexEpilogue: ‘The Age of Veneer’: the limits of liberal consumerism