Charity and poverty in England, c.1680-1820: Wild and visionary schemes

by Sarah Lloyd

Overview

This book explores responses to poverty in eighteenth-century England, with an eye to some of the odder manifestations of charity and poor relief. Whether discussing proposals for vast inland colonies or cosy firesides, men and women demonstrated that imagination, excitement and experiment were as important as systematic argument in making early-modern social policy. Ceremonies and material objects encapsulated ideas and attracted supporters; energy poured into realising imagined prospects in buildings, streetscapes and landscapes across England and beyond.

Charity and Poverty in England aims to shed fresh light on ideas and lived experience, on cultural worlds in which social relations were unevenly worked out. It analyses the settings in which gentlemen, magistrates, officials, pamphleteers, ladies and neighbours reacted to the poverty of others, and poor people asserted their own beliefs and experiences.

The book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of eighteenth-century cultural history and the history of social policy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780719078835
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	12/22/2009
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sarah Lloyd is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

List of illustrations vii

1 Introduction: acts of imagination 1

2 Usefulness and beyond 36

3 Wild and visionary schemes 77

4 English oaks: William Hanbury and Jonas Hanway 120

5 Charitable things I: memory and spectacle 169

6 Charitable things II: food and fashion 216

7 Cottage conversations: poverty and manly independence in late eighteenth-century England 253

8 Conclusions 292

Bibliography 300

Index 334