Overview
- Funded by the Wellcome Trust, this book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license
- Presents a social history of drinking in Britain, focusing on consumers’ actions and attitudes rather than the problems of alcohol
- Explores why people continued to drink alcohol throughout a period when it became increasingly difficult to do so in a socially acceptable way
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Table of contents (13 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This open access book surveys drinking in Britain between the Licensing Act of 1869 and the wartime regulations imposed on alcohol production and consumption after 1914. This was a period marked by the expansion of the drink industry and by increasingly restrictive licensing laws. Politics and commerce co-existed with moral and medical concerns about drunkenness and combined, these factors pushed alcohol consumers into the public spotlight. Through an analysis of public and private records, medical texts and sociological studies, the book investigates the reasons why Victorians and Edwardians consumed alcohol in the ways that they did and explores the ideas about alcohol that circulated in the period. This book shows that they had many reasons for purchasing and consuming alcoholic substances and these were driven by broader social, cultural, medical and commercial factors. Although drunkenness may have been the most visible consequence of alcohol consumption, it was not the only type of drinking behaviour. Alcohol played an important social role in the everyday lives of Victorians and Edwardians where its consumption held many different meanings.
Reviews
“Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain makes a fresh contribution to the discipline across numerous fields. Cheers to that.” (Lacey Sparks, Victorian Studies, Vol. 61 (4), 2019)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Thora Hands completed her PhD in History at the University of Strathclyde and is currently a Lecturer in Social Sciences at City of Glasgow College, UK.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain
Book Subtitle: Beyond the Spectre of the Drunkard
Authors: Thora Hands
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92964-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-92963-7Published: 29 June 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-06558-4Published: 22 December 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-92964-4Published: 18 June 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 195
Number of Illustrations: 20 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, Social History, History of Medicine, British Culture