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.

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;

"This volume offers a welcome contribution to discussions of consumption, labour, and leisure. Its readers will discover much about different experiences of lubricated identities (established and emergent) and identity politics on both sides of the Atlantic between 1700 and 1900. (...) this volume satisfies the two chief requirements of any edited collection. It presents original research and it provokes ongoing debate. It is therefore to be convivially welcomed." - Conrad Brunstrom