Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England - by Sara Pennell & Jon Stobart (Hardcover)

About the Book

An exploration of the largely unknown world of household auctions in Georgian England, arguing their importance in supplying various consumer goods to households at all levels of society.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Auctions were an essential source of material life, yet second-hand goods have long been relegated to a secondary interest of scholars. No longer: through nuanced analyses of an impressive array of sources, this excellent book brings to life the circuits of exchange that integrated new and used goods and the people who bought, sold, and used them.
Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, Professor of History, University of California, USA

Covering the who, how and why of household auctions, Pennell and Stobart's volume shows how buying and selling used goods was crucial to the economic, cultural and social lives of the Georgians. It re-establishes the importance of the second-hand as a key means of consuming in eighteenth-century England.
Kate Smith, Associate Professor in Eighteenth-Century History, University of Birmingham, UK

The book is impressive in its arguments and in its depth of sources. Gathering and marshalling a vast array of material related to the trade in second-hand goods, it extends coverage from the 'consumer revolution' of the eighteenth century to the Victorian period.
Stephen G. Hague, Associate Professor of Modern European History, Rowan University, USA

About the Author

Sara Pennell is an independent scholar, having most recently been 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) and author of The Birth of the English Kitchen (Bloomsbury, 2016).

Jon Stobart, FRHS, is Professor of Social History at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy (Bloomsbury, 2025) and editor of The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 (Bloomsbury, 2020), 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).