HIST 231: Imagining Enlightenment in 18th-Century Europe (HC)

This essay appears in a collection in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-century Political Thought edited by Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler.

This history of luxury includes sections on the Renaissance and early modern periods. In the middle ages and the Renaissance luxury was linked to notions of magnificence and courtly splendour. In the eighteenth century luxury was at the centre of philosophical debates over its role in shaping people's desires and oiling the wheels of commerce.

Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain explores the invention, making, and buying of new, semi-luxury, and fashionable consumer goods during the eighteenth century. It follows the progress of china tea ware, cutlery, candlesticks, buckles, and buttons, as they were made, shopped for, and then displayed in the homes of Britain's urban middling classes.

This collection of essays explores the political, economic, moral, and intellectual effects of the production and consumption of luxury goods in the 18th century. The history of luxury links diverse topics of enquiry such as material culture, taste, civility and sensibility, literature, and art. The text provides a broadly-based account from a variety of perspectives, addressing key themes of economic debate, material culture, the principles of art and taste, luxury as "female vice," and the exotic.

Through a detailed examination of inventories and other previously unpublished records, Sargentson offers a new perspective on the history of consumption, and she paints a fascinating picture of the luxury market during the decades that preceded the French Revolution. Subjects covered include the corporation of the merciers and their business practice, their role in design, imported goods and European imitations, novelty and innovation, the merciers' shops and the magasins anglais.

This groundbreaking book seeks to reimagine objects from eighteenth-century Paris within their original context, showing how they were used in the daily routines of elite members of society. Against the background of the reign of Louis XV (r. 1723–1774), the chapters move chronologically from morning to night, covering such topics as temporal literacy and technological advances in timekeeping; innovations in domestic architecture and design for privacy; fashion and self-identity as expressed in the ritual of the morning toilette; reading and discussion of literary texts as influences on the collecting of art; and sociability and politesse during nocturnal entertainments.

In Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, Roy Porter and Marie Mulvey Roberts question the idea of pleasure as unmediated, natural experience. To what extent was pleasure stage-managed to make it socially, morally, and politically acceptable? From cross-dressing to feasting, music to charity work, the essays in this volume probe the foundations of eighteenth-century society while entertaining the reader vicariously with their tales of vanished delights.