ABSTRACT
Eighteenth-century England displayed some of the characteristics of a consumer society. A brief exploration of some aspects of the world of obsessive consumption, notably around fashionable dress, illustrates these ideas. The world of collectors and collecting also sheds light on how objects could be used to create a lifestyle or play a role in polite society. Collecting, however, often starts with relatively unfocused accumulating. They were curiosities and included items from the natural world as well as the products of human creativity. Collecting was a serious pursuit in the eighteenth century as in subsequent periods. Alongside items like paintings, sculpture, prints and appropriately chosen and displayed porcelain, they could proclaim the connoisseurship and good taste of their owner. Book collecting was not only an elite pursuit. Many were religious works or classical literature, but they also included some he had written himself, such as 'Wheatcroft's daily meditations'.
