Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England
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- ISBN 9781350549098
- Weight: 620g
- Dimensions: 154 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jan 2026
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This book provides the first comprehensive examination of household auctions as the key mechanism for recirculating household goods through the 18th and early 19th century. Sara Pennell and Jon Stobart contextualise and historicise the importance of used goods to consumer choices, experiences and identities. They tell the stories of the people and things, as well as the broader processes, practices and attitudes that were bound up in the commercial recirculation of used goods through auctions.
Auctions and the Consumption of Used Goods in Georgian England rebalances the historiography of second-hand consumption – currently dominated by used clothing and the sale of books, art and antiques – and brings second-hand into the mainstream of household consumption. It also explodes the twin myths that second-hand was the last resort of the poor and that it declined rapidly as Britain industrialised and the supply of new consumer goods increased. The book demonstrates that consumer motivations were far more complex than simple financial necessity and household auctions did not fade to the margins; they remained an important part of how households acquired a wide variety of goods and fulfilled a variety of consumer needs.
Sara Pennell is an independent scholar, having most recently been Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Greenwich, UK. She is the co-editor, along with Michelle DiMeo, of Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550-1800 (2013) and author of The Birth of the English Kitchen (Bloomsbury, 2016).
Jon Stobart, FRHS, is Professor of Social History at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy (Bloomsbury, 2025) and editor of The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 (Bloomsbury, 2020), A Cultural History of Shopping, 6 volumes (Bloomsbury, 2022), and co-editor, with Christopher J. Berry, of A Cultural History of Luxury in the Age of Enlightenment (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).
