Credit and Community

[A] careful and thorough study of the role of credit in working-class communities in Britain from the late nineteenth century to the present… [an] informative study. * Peter Gurney, 20th Century British History *Credit’s centrality to the current economic crisis makes the publication of Sean O’Connell’s social history of working-class credit consumption particularly timely. Although the credit crunch came too late to be included in this book, the portrait of a complex relationship between lenders and borrowers over the past 120 years should be required reading for those suggesting we are living on the brink of a new economic epoch. * Times Higher Education *

Sean O’Connell first monograph - The car in British society: class, gender and motoring (Manchester University Press, 1998) was part of the shift in British social and cultural history away from the study of production towards the analysis of consumption and consumers. His more recent projects have continued this interest. Amongst topics he has analyzed have been the history of men’s consumer magazines, and the history of `joyriding.’ He has published his work injournals such as Economic History Review, Twentieth Century British History, and the British Journal of Criminology. His research has been supported by grants from the ESRC, the Leverhulme Trust, andthe AHRC. His interest in the issue of consumer credit began with his co-authorship (with Dilwyn Porter and Richard Coopey) of Mail order retailing in Britain: a business and social history (Oxford University Press, 2005) and culminates with this monograph on working class experiences of consumer credit since 1880.