Culture does not become 'culture' until it is consumed. This is the radical new interpretation of early modern social history presented in The Consumption of Culture 1600-1800. Leading specialists from North America and Europe explore topics such as the formation of a culture consuming public, the development of a literary canon, the role of consumption in the formation of the modern state, elite and popular forms of cultural consumption and the place of women as consumers of culture. The result is an important and rich new approach to the study of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.