Consuming Anxieties: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Trade in British Satire, 1660-1751

Consuming Anxieties explores how literary satirists represented alcohol and tobacco in their work, highlighting social concerns about class, race, and gender and critiquing the effects of consumable luxuries on the British body and consciousness.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 14 June 2024
Publisher: Bucknell University Press,U.S.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a period of significant economic transformation, writers recognized the potential of the global trade in alcohol and tobacco to enhance England's financial prospects. However, excessive indulgence at home presented moral challenges. This captivating and innovative study delves into how literary satirists portrayed these consumables and the associated anxieties surrounding the evolving nature of Britishness in their works. Riley traces the satirical treatment of wine, beer, ale, gin, pipe tobacco, and snuff from the early years of Charles II's reign, during the tobacco boom, to the end of the Gin Craze in libertine poems and plays, anonymous verse, ballad operas, and the satire of canonical writers such as Gay, Pope, and Swift. By focusing on social concerns related to class, race, and gender, Consuming Anxieties explores how satirists celebrated England's economic prowess on the global stage while simultaneously critiquing the impact of consumable luxuries on the British body and consciousness.

Weight: 50g
Dimension: 235 x 156 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781684485314