ABSTRACT
In a substantial bibliographical essay on ‘Drink and Sobriety in England, 1815–1872’, Brian Harrison amassed no fewer than 841 references (1967). Of this impressive total a mere eleven items dealt with the drink industries. By comparison with other aspects of the nineteenth-century drink problem it could well be argued that the drink industries have been afflicted with that curious historical malady known as neglect. The work of recent students of the temperance movement has greatly augmented historical understanding of the extensive social functions performed by drink and drink sellers, but it has scarcely been matched by comparable investigation of drink producers (Harrison, 1967; Lambert, 1975).
