The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London 1660-1730 - Softcover

Peter Earle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0413652807 ISBN 13: 9780413652805

Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd, 1991

Synopsis

This is the first major study of a neglected yet extremely significant 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 neighbors, 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.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Earle is Reader in Economic History at the University of London and teaches at the London School of Economics. He is the author of several books on maritime history and English social history, the latter including The World of Defoe and Monmouth's Rebels.

Edition details

• Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0413652807
• ISBN 13: 9780413652805
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464