Daily Life in 18th Century England (2nd edition)

Any consideration of daily life in the past must begin with a framework – a set of relationships which gives some shape and structure to the thousands of mundane details that make up social history. The most useful framework in this case is the English class system. It was a system with yawning inequalities, and it reveals how access to the material amenities of life was distributed among the privileged rich, the middling sort and the poor. Class differences were flaunted, and the grand figures of society made no apology for their privilege – in fact, they boasted of it....