Description
Book SynopsisExamination of the history of personal debt and credit from 1740 to 1914 from three interlocking perspectives: representations of debt in novels, diaries and autobiographical memoirs; the transformation of imprisonment for debt; and the use of small claims courts to mediate disputes between debtors and creditors. Includes extensive archival research.
Trade Review'Finn has made us all her debtors, for an outstanding book that is a must for all historians of modern Britain. It is a major contribution to the growing field of consumer history.' The Times Higher Education Supplement
'… draws upon an impressive - and sometimes almost intoxicating - range of contemporary source material … Finn's conclusions are challenging and important … The Character of Credit is an outstanding book that should be read by early modern and late modern historians alike.' The Economic History Review
'… fascinating …' Journal of Continuity and Change
'The questions it raises about the social and cultural embeddedness of economic relations are of major importance to economic historians, the history of the debtors' prisons in an outstanding piece of social history, and the work on plebeian encounters with civil law is of considerable significance … this is not just a book that deserves to be widely read, but a book which ought to prompt and guide a great deal of further research by historians … sets a high standard.' Reviews in History
'Margot Finn's book is an outstanding example of a new type of history that might be called the 'history of economic culture'.' The Historical Journal
Table of ContentsList of illustrations; List of tables; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Debt and Credit in English Memory and Imagination: 1. Fictions of debt and credit, 1740–1914; 2. Debt and credit in diaries and autobiographies; Part II. Imprisonment for Debt and the Economic Individual: 3. 'Mansions of misery': the unreformed debtors' prison; 4. Discipline or abolish? Reforming imprisonment for debt; Part III. Petty Debts and the Modernisation of English Law: 5. 'A kind of parliamentary magic': eighteenth-century courts of conscience; 6. From courts of conscience to county courts: small-claims litigation in the nineteenth century; 7. Market moralities: tradesmen, credit and the courts in Victorian and Edwardian England; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
