‘The Quakers tea table overturn’d’

A Literary Satire of the Eighteenth-century Tea Party

Authors

  • Elizabeth Stainforth University of Leeds Author
  • C Anne Wilson Independent Scholar Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/ppc.28348

Keywords:

tea culture, 18th century, tea parties, tea services, Quaker, religious values, moral anxieties, didactic poetry, female domesticity, social history, satirical poetry, moral panics

Abstract

This article was developed from research undertaken for an exhibition of creamware co-curated by students on the MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the University of Leeds in 2010. The exhibition, titled ‘Vanity Ware: Affordable Luxury in the Late Georgian Period’, related the production of creamware to the contemporary popularity of beverages such as tea and the emergence of an aspirational and upwardly mobile middle class in the eighteenth century. The article explores the moral panic that the practice of tea drinking by young ladies often evoked in certain religious circles. 

Author Biographies

  • Elizabeth Stainforth, University of Leeds

     Elizabeth Stainforth is a PhD Candidate at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. She also works part-time at the University Art Gallery, the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery.

  • C Anne Wilson, Independent Scholar

    C. Anne Wilson is the founder of the Leeds Symposium on Food History and was formerly in charge of the Special Collections at the Brotherton Library

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Published

2015-02-01

Issue

PPC 102 (2015)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

‘The Quakers tea table overturn’d’: A Literary Satire of the Eighteenth-century Tea Party. (2015). Petits Propos Culinaires, 14-22. https://doi.org/10.1558/ppc.28348