Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750-1800

In this broad-ranging interdisciplinary study, Raven explores literature and the book trade in the second half of the eighteenth century. Based on intensive research into the production and sale of literature ranging from novels and periodical essays to courtesy books and popular manuals, the book examines the representation of the newly wealthy. Raven challenges the notion that prejudice against the businessman was a late nineteenth-century phenomenon. He shows how, during a period of often bewildering change and instability, a competitive literature industry led reaction against excessive consumer spending, contributed to the definition of legitimate economic behavior, and stimulated unprecedented attacks upon the social presumption of tradesmen. A scholarly and stimulating study, this book makes important contributions to debates on the supposed decline of the British industrial spirit class.