Consuming Anxieties

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Trade in British Satire, 1660-1751

Dayne C. Riley

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781684485314
  9781684485321
• eBook ISBN:
  9781684485338
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Literature

Writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—a period of vast economic change—recognized that the global trade in alcohol and tobacco promised a brighter financial future for England, even as overindulgence at home posed serious moral pitfalls. This engaging and original study explores how literary satirists represented these consumables—and related anxieties about the changing nature of Britishness—in their work. Riley traces the satirical treatment of wine, beer, ale, gin, pipe tobacco, and snuff from the beginning of Charles II's reign, through the boom in tobacco's popularity, to the end of the Gin Craze in libertine poems and plays, anonymous verse, ballad operas, and the satire of canonical writers such as Gay, Pope, and Swift. Focusing on social concerns about class, race, and gender, Consuming Anxieties examines how satirists championed Britain's economic strength on the world stage while critiquing the effects of consumable luxuries on the British body and consciousness.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1. “The Vice of the Time”: Wine, Libertinism, and Commerce in the Age of Charles II
• 2. Bottling Up Your Anger: Alehouse and Tavern Satire in Stuart England
• 3. Sot-Weed or Indian Weed? Pipe Tobacco and Satire, 1689–1709
• 4. “The Ceremony of the Snuff-Box”: Snuff in British Satirical Essays and Poems, 1709–1732
• 5. English Satirical Writing in the Age of Mother Gin, 1723–1751
• Epilogue: The Smoke of War and the Imperial Thirst
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author