Buying for the Home examines how strategies of retailers were both arbitrated by, and negotiated through the actions and desires of the homemaker as a consumer in early-modern, modern and post-modern society. Drawing on a wide selection of interdisciplinary work from established scholars and new researchers, the volume is organised around four key themes: retail arenas and the everyday; identity and lifestyle; fashioning domestic space; and cultural practice. Through ten linked case studies, Buying for the Home forces us to consider the fractured space that existed between the world of goods and the middle- and working-class home.

Contents: Preface; Introduction: between the shop and the home, David Hussey and Margaret Ponsonby; Part 1 Retail Areas and the 'Everyday': Shopping at 1st hand? Mistresses, servants and shopping for the household in early modern England, Claire Walsh; 'To families furnishing kitchens': domestic utensils and their use in the 18th-century home, Karin Dannehl; Guns, horses and stylish waistcoats? Male consumer activity and domestic shopping in late-18th- and early-19th-century England, David Hussey. Part 2 Shopping for Identities?: Liberty and lifestyle: shopping for art and luxury in 19th-century London, Sonia Ashmore; 'Artistic and commercial' Japan: modernity, authenticity and Japanese leather, Yasuko Suga. Part 3 Fashioning the Domestic: Making and Re-Making the Home through Consumption: Desirable commodity or practical necessity? The sale and consumption of 2nd-hand furniture, 1750-1900, Clive Edwards and Margaret Ponsonby ; 'A pretty custom' updated: from 'going to housekeeping' to bridal showers in the United States, 1850s-1930s, Shirley Teresa Wajda. Part 4 Consumption for the Home as Cultural Practice: The milkman always rang twice: the effects of changed provisioning on Dutch domestic architecture, Irene Cieraad; From Ground Force to garden-making: how ordinary gardeners consume television lifestyle aesthetics, Lisa Taylor; Taking a look at the wild side of diy home décor, Judy Attfield; Index.