Reviews
'Deborah Valenze's extraordinarily original The Social Life of Money in the English Past removes the history of money from the economists and inserts it into the lives of people who cannot quite understand it but find they have to live by it. The issues it raises go well beyond eighteenth-century Britain.' The Guardian, "This wonderful book is filled with far too many fascinating ideas and examples to be covered here. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers, particularly in its demonstration of the transforming power of money and its ability to redefine social relationships and to remake the identity of users." -John Patrick Montano, The Historian, "Deborah Valenze's extraordinarily original The Social Life of Money in the English Past removes the history of money from the economists and inserts it into the lives of people who cannot quite understand it but find they have to live by it. The issues it raises go well beyond 18th-century Britain." Eric Hobsbawm, The Manchester Guardian, "...Valenze's book sheds important light on the process by which a modern sense of money and its function came to predominate. The details of this shift are not well known and the author's work placing it at the crossroads of economic, social, and cultural history is truly valuable." -Dana Rabin, H-Albion, "Not the least of the contributions of Deborah Valenze's book, The Social Life of Money in the English Past, is that, in the process of defining its own subject, it surveys and intellectually criticizes a wide spectrum of this new work and links it to an equally wide range of relevant theory...it provides a rich array of new perspectives on a topic usually examined through the narrow lens of economics." -Woodruff D. Smith, University of Massachusetts, Business History Review, "Valenze's rich book illuminates a number of important, and oft-overlooked, social practices associated with money during a pivotal period of English history." -Scott Breuninger, Canadian Journal of History, "Valenze's...will be the most useful to readers unfamililar with the history of finance because her historical range is wide and her primary resources quite varied." -Alexander Dick, Eigteenth-Century Life, "...Her argument has particular resonance for historians working on early modern Britain, but those working in other fields will find this book useful both for the interpretive questions it raises and for the eclectic and sophisticated theoretical foundations on which it is based." --John Smail, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Journal of Modern History, 'Deborah Valenze's extraordinarily original The Social Life of Money in the English Past removes the history of money from the economists and inserts it into the lives of people who cannot quite understand it but find they have to live by it. The issues it raises go well beyond eighteenth-century Britain.' Eric Hobsbawm, The Manchester Guardian, 'Using personal letters, diary entries, pamphlets, allegorical tales, poems, plays, and visual art, the Social Life of Money is seen from a variety of perspectives. Anthropological, literary, feminist, and social theories are firmly integrated into a dense analysis of social change in early modern England.' Literature and History
