Life in the Georgian Parsonage

"Bringing together a wide range of source material - from portraits to personal diaries, satirical prints to sermons, to plans and designs of parsonages - Morality and Materiality looks at the houses, consumption and lifestyle of Church of England clergy in the long eighteenth century, reconstructing the material lives and household arrangements of the Georgian clergy in glorious detail. In examining the parish clergy over this period of profound social and religious change through the lens of consumption, and the lives of these clergymen, it offers a transformative account both on these areas of enquiry and on our understanding of English society in the 18th century"--

Jon Stobart, FRHS, is Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, and the author of The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 (Bloomsbury, 2020), editor of A Taste for Luxury (Bloomsbury, 2017) with Johanna Ilmakunnas, General Editor of 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). He is also editor of Global Goods and the Country House (2023), author of Comfort and the Eighteenth-Century Country House (2022) and co-author of Consumption and the Country House (2016).

Introduction 1. Representations of the clergy: critiquing incomes, worldliness and pretension 2. The worldliness problem: sermons on luxury, moderation and dignity 3. The changing nature of the parsonage: improvement, convenience and status 4. A world of goods: buying and locating household belongings 5. At home with the clergy: practicing politeness and hospitality 6. Communities of interest: family, parish and neighbourhood 7. Personal perspectives on consumption: religion, morality and duty Conclusions Bibliography