This collection of essays covers the representation and practice of drinking a variety of beverages across eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and North America. The case studies in this volume cover drinking culture from a variety of perspectives, including literature, history, anthropology and the history of medicine.

Susanne Schmid, Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp

Introduction, Susanne Schmid, Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp; Part I Ritual and Material Culture; Chapter 1 Politics By Design: Consumption, Identity and Allegiance, Karen Harvey; Chapter 2 Drinks, Domesticity and the Forging of an American Identity in Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World (1850), Caroline Rosenthal; Part II Institutions and Social Class; Chapter 3 Café or Coffeehouse? Transnational Histories of Coffee and Sociability, Brian Cowan; Chapter 4 Claret at a Premium: Ned Ward, the True Tory Defender of Fine Wines?, Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann; Chapter 5 Eighteenth-Century Travellers and the Country Inn, Susanne Schmid; Chapter 6 Drinking, Fighting and Working-Class Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Britain, John Carter Wood; Part III Temperance and the Misery of Alcohol; Chapter 7 Romantic Radicalism and the Temperance Movement, Rolf Lessenich; Chapter 8 The Myth of 'Misery Alcoholism' in Early Industrial England: The Example of Manchester, Gunther Hirschfelder; Part IV Intoxication and Therapy; Chapter 9 Alcohol, Sympathy and Ideology in George Gissing's The Nether World (1889) and The Odd Women (1893), Anja Müller-Wood; Chapter 10 Legends of Infernal Drinkers: Representations of Alcohol in Thomas Hardy and Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Norbert Lennartz; Chapter 11 The Spirit of Medicine: The Use of Alcohol in Nineteenth-Century Medical Practice, Jonathan Reinarz, Rebecca Wynter; Part V Case Studies: Rum, Cocoa and Magical Potions; Chapter 12 'Been to Barbados': Rum(Bullion), Race, the Gaspée and the American Revolution, Eva-Sabine Zehelein; Chapter 13 A Beverage for the Masses: The Democratization of Cocoa in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, Monika Elbert; Chapter 14 The Power of the Potion: From Gothic Horror to Health Drink, or, How the Elixir Became a Commodity, Elmar Schenkel;