Buying for the Home examines how strategies of retailers were both arbitrated by, and negotiated through the actions and desires of the homemaker as a consumer in early-modern, modern and post-modern society. Drawing on a wide selection of interdisciplinary work from established scholars and new researchers, the volume is organised around four key themes: retail arenas and the everyday; identity and lifestyle; fashioning domestic space; and cultural practice. Through ten linked case studies, Buying for the Home forces us to consider the fractured space that existed between the world of goods and the middle- and working-class home.

Content includes every aspect of family life, such as a suitable age for marriage, the need for good temper in the home, the cherishing of our bodies ("never trifle with disease"), the proper window for an invalid, causes of insanity--and hundreds of things you never thought of. An absolutely beautiful and fascinating book on 19th Century life with rich, fully colored illustrations of family life