ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the lens is turned onto selling outside the fixed shop; an area of retailing that is difficult to grasp hold of.1 The focus and volume of recent research into retail history reflects the relative paucity of materials that illuminate the mobile, often very small and ephemeral businesses. Whereas retailing from the fixed shop is recognized as contributing significantly to the so-called Consumer Revolution, the role of itinerants2 has received little reassessment since the publication of Margaret Spufford’s study of the seventeenth-century ‘petty chapman’ over twenty years ago.3
