Creating and Consuming Culture in North-East England, 1660–1830

Helen Berry, Jeremy Gregory

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351947862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Historians of the long eighteenth century have recently recognised that this period is central both to the history of cultural production and consumption and to the history of national and regional identity. Yet no book has, as yet, directly engaged with these two areas of interest at the same time. By uniting interest in the history of culture with the history of regional identity, Creating and Consuming Culture in North-East England, 1660-1830 is of crucial importance to a wide range of historians and intervenes in a number of highly important historical and conceptual debates in a timely and provocative way. The book makes a substantial contribution to eighteenth-century studies. Not only do these essays demonstrate that in thinking about cultural production and consumption in the eighteenth century there are important continuities as well as changes that need to be considered, but also they complicate the commonplace assumption of metropolitan-led cultural change and cultural innovation. Rather than the usual model of centre-periphery diffusion, a number of contributions show that cultural change in the provinces was happening at the same time as in, or in some cases even before, London. The essays also indicate the complex relationship between cultural consumption and social status, with some cultural forms being more inclusive than others.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• General Editor's Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Was the North-East Different from Other Areas? The Property of Everyday Consumption in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries
• 3 North of the Trent: Images of Northern-ness and Northern English in the Eighteenth Century
• 4 Spirits in the North-East? Gin and Other Vices in the Long Eighteenth Century
• 5 The Sociability of the Trade Guilds of Newcastle and Durham, 1660-1750: The Urban Renaissance Revisited
• 6 'A Clumsey Countrey Girl': The Material and Print Culture of Betty Bowes
• 7 An Alternative Community in North-East England: Quakers, Morals and Popular Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century
• 8 Creating Polite Space: The Organisation and Social Function of the Newcastle Assembly Rooms
• 9 Newcastle's First Art Exhibitions and the Language of Civic Humanism
• Index