The Clothing Trade in Provincial England, 1800-1850

The Clothing Trade in Provincial England, 1800--1850

Alison Toplis

This is the first detailed study to examine the purchase and exchange of clothing by provincial non-elite consumers. Toplis investigates how everyday apparel was bought and sold using evidence from a wide range of sources including newspapers, trade directories, court records, visual sources and surviving garments. She shows how acquisition patterns varied according to location and examines the retail networks for these types of consumers: how they obtained their clothes; how they used suppliers; and how they perceived their clothing and its relationship with fashion.

Perspectives in Economic and Social History

Series Editors: Andrew August and Robert E. Wright

The series includes monographs dealing with aspects of social and economic history in Britain, Europe or America from the early modern period into the twentieth century. It incorporates tides organized around the following principal thematic areas: landholding patterns; poverty and welfare; demography and family history; consumption; medicine; industrialization, including occupational structures; urbanization and the urban environment; trade; and micro-histories. Books in the series will offer reappraisals of the interaction of economy and society at the level of nation state, region, community and family.