At Home with the Poor
Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, C.1650-1850
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Manchester University Press
Published:20th Jan '26
£25.00
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This book opens the doors to the homes of the forgotten poor and traces the goods they owned before, during and after the industrial revolution (c. 1650–1850). Using a vast and diverse range of sources, it gets to the very heart of what it meant to be ‘poor’ by examining the homes of the impoverished and mapping how numerous household goods became more widespread. As the book argues, poverty did not necessarily equate to owning very little and living in squalor. In fact, its novel findings show that most of the poor strove to improve their domestic spheres and that their demand for goods was so great that it was a driving force of the industrial revolution.
'This is a fabulous addition to the fields of material culture, consumption, and economic history during the period 1650–1850.'
CHOICE Reviews
'At Home with the Poor provides a view into the homes of the so-called ‘forgotten poor’ across the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, considering the condition of the poor before, during and after the Industrial Revolution... Harley brings his subjects to life with plentiful examples. The potential reader may be expecting a book about the objects poor people had. However, this work is much more about these ordinary people, seen through the lens of their objects.'
Joe Saunders, Family & Community History
'Overall, At Home with the Poor is a landmark study based on an exceptional set of sources. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the daily life and material culture of the poor in Northwestern Europe before, during, and after the Industrial Revolution.'
Jeroen Kole, The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History
ISBN: 9781526194749
Dimensions: 244mm x 170mm x 15mm
Weight: 440g
272 pages