Shopping for pleasure
Subtitle: women in the making of London's West End
By: Erika Diane Rappaport.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Princeton, NJ
Language: eng
Number of pages: 323
Subjects: Consumer behavior -- England -- London -- Sex differences -- History; Consumption (Economics) -- England -- London -- Sex differences -- History; Women consumers -- England -- London -- History; Department stores -- England -- London -- History; West End (London, England) -- Economic conditions
Description: "In Shopping for Pleasure, Erika Rappaport reconstructs London's Victorian and Edwardian West End as an entertainment and retail center. In this neighborhood of stately homes, royal palaces, and spacious parks and squares, a dramatic transformation unfolded that ultimately changed the meaning of femininity and the lives of women, shaping their experience of modernity.

Rappaport illuminates the various forces of the period that encouraged and discouraged women's enjoyment of public life and particularly shows how shopping came to be seen as the quintessential leisure activity for middle- and upper-class women.

Through extensive histories of department stores, women's magazines, clubs, teashops, restaurants, and the theater as interwoven sites of consumption, Shopping for Pleasure uncovers how a new female urban culture emerged before and after the turn of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [281]-313) and index.
Table of contents: title: "The halls of temptation": the universal provider and the pleasures of suburbia; title: The trials of consumption: marriage, law, and women's credit; title: "Resting places from women wayfarers": feminism and the comforts of the public sphere; title: Metropolitan journeys: shopping traveling, and reading the West End; title: "A new era of shopping": an American department store in Edwardian London; title: Acts of consumption: musical comedy and the desire of exchange.