workbuyconsumedieWe start with Noel Thompson’s Social Opulence and Private Restraint: the Consumer in British Socialist Thought Since 1800, as Jamie Melrose and the author debate a survey of the Left’s attitude to the worker-consumer in the heyday and beyond of British industrial society (no. 1919, with response here).

Next up we have a review article on The Other Mrs Adams, as Todd Webb reviews five biographies of Louisa Catherine Adams (no. 1918).

Then we turn to Challenging Orthodoxies: The Social and Cultural Worlds of Early Modern Women: Essays Presented to Hilda L. Smith, edited by Sigrun Haude and Melinda Zook, which Charmian Mansell praises as an important book that both celebrates and builds upon the work of Hilda Smith (no. 1917).

Finally Peter Grant and editors Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas discuss The Home Front in Britain: Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914, a wide-ranging survey which challenges some of the misconceptions we hold about the two home fronts (no. 1916, with response here).