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Publication Date
6-14-2024
Description
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.
Keywords
long eighteenth century, Britain, satire, tobacco, alcohol, alcoholism, vice, addiction, media, literature, class, gender, taxes, history, england, united kingdom, Pipe smoking, Wine, Gin, Liquor, Ale, Beer, Snuff, Snuffbox, Taverns, Food and drink studies, British satire, British culture, British society, History of society, Cultural studies, Alehouses, Charles II, Gin Craze, Alexander Pope, Consumerism, Consumer culture, Consumption, Consumable, Gender studies, Early modern culture, John Gay, Edward Ravenscroft, William Wycherley, George Etherege, John Wilmot, Restoration, Libertine, Ned Ward, Lawrence Spooner, Ebenezer Cooke, Jonathan Swift, Bernard Mandeville, Henry Fielding, William Hogarth, Gin Lane, Beer Street, Eighteenth-century Britain, Stuart England
Rights
Copyright © 2024 by Dayne C. Riley All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Bucknell University Press, Hildreth-Mirza Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837–2005. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Language
eng
ISBN
9781684485345