Consuming Passions

For synopses and reviews of Judith's books, please click on the appropriate cover.

'CONSUMING PASSIONS'

Synopsis:

Imagine a world where just one in ten people has a knife or a fork, where five out of six do not possess a cup. This was Britain in the early eighteenth century, yet by the close of the nineteenth, lives were transformed, centring around urban living, industrial employment, shopping and professional entertainment. The Industrial Revolution brought with it factories, railways, mines and machines. It also brought travel, department stores, leisure and pleasure.

Consuming Passions tells the fascinating story of how, over two centuries, leisure became an industry, offering a cornucopia of entertainment for a new mass audience, as demand was fuelled by newspapers, by advertising, by publicity – all eighteenth-century creations. Josiah Wedgwood invented money-back guarantees and celebrity endorsements; in the following century Charles Harrod and Gordon Selfridge aggressively exploited and extended the possibilities of marketing and publicity for their department stores.

Professional leisure had long existed, but easy access for the masses was new. Now technology brought elaborate theatrical extravaganzas, with dramatic special effects, hundreds of extras and even animals – one theatre staged a running of the Derby, with real horses; another recreated the battle of Waterloo, complete with a baggage wagon on fire, frightened horses bolting and, the popular finale, the flight of Napoleon.

Change was fuelled by the railways, creating a mass leisure market. Only a decade after the first-ever passenger train, regular services carried eager crowds to racetracks across the country; by the end of the century sporting events could draw tens of thousands of spectators. In an emblematic moment, in 1883 football truly became the people’s game when Blackburn Olympic, a team consisting of three weavers, one loomer, one gilder, two iron-foundry workers, one clerk, one plumber, one grocer and one dental assistant, wrested the FA Cup away from the hitherto dominant Old Etonians.

The seaside and tourism, newspapers and novels, concerts, museums and shopping arcades – all were part of the new consumer world. From Aston Villa’s origins in a Sunday-school to Thomas Cook’s temperance tours, from Aquascutum to W. H. Smith, Judith Flanders reveals how, building on revolutions in science, technology and industry, an entirely new world was created, a world of thrilling new shopping sensations, lavish spectacle and wild theatricality – the world, in fact, of today.

Reviews:

'Power to the people' by Jane Stevenson in The Observer, Sunday August 13, 2006 ....read more

'The pursuit of happiness' by John Carey in The Sunday Times, 20th August 2006 ....read more

'Oh what a show' by Lawrence Norfolk in The Guardian, Saturday August 26th 2006 ....read more

‘Victorious Victorians!' by A. N. Wilson, 1 September 2006, The Daily Mail ....read more

'Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain' by Jacqueline Banerjee, Victorian Web (UK) ....read more

'Who needs a self-lighting fairy?' by Lucy Lethbridge, 19 November 2006 The independent ....read more

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