Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England

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 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).

Jon Stobart, FRHS, is Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, and the editor of The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 (Bloomsbury, 2020), A Taste for Luxury (Bloomsbury, 2017) with Johanna Ilmakunnas, General Editor of 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). He is also editor of Global Goods and the Country House (2023), author of Comfort and the Eighteenth-Century Country House (2022) and co-author of Consumption and the Country House (2016).