London Revisited: Coffee, Satire and Bubbles

The coffee served in London in the 1690s was notoriously unappetising, likened at the time to ‘burnt shoes and charcoal’. Nonetheless it was extremely popular, not least for the energy and locations it provided for two great booms in London life: financial speculation and a genuinely public print culture. For this episode, Rosemary is joined by Markman Ellis, professor of 18th-century studies at Queen Mary University of London, to look at the architecture, literature and culture of ‘politeness’ that emerged after the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the stories spun out of it by Daniel Defoe and John Gay. They discuss the coffee houses where London’s stock exchange and marine insurance market were created, the front rooms where women enjoyed the new ‘visiting system’ and the increasingly hazardous streets where Moll Flanders and others sought their fortune.

Reading by Fiona Sheehan

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Read more in the LRB:

Steven Shapin on coffee: https://lrb.me/lrep901

Tom Paulin on Defoe: https://lrb.me/lrep902

Michael Ledger-Lomas on the South Sea Company: https://lrb.me/lrep903

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