Jon Stobart, Life in the Georgian Parsonage. Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024). xx + 392 pp.

There is an unfortunate tendency among many historians to relegate study of the clergy to the disciplines of theology and church history, as though this group of men and their families acted only within a very limited social framework circumscribed by religiosity.This kind of thinking has resulted in a considerable gap in our knowledge and understanding of the past.It is well understood that religion permeated society in earlier centuries and that clergy consequently played important roles as both authority figures and examples of piety.Yet, somehow this understanding has not translated to any particular interest among historians in clergy as people.This monograph is a decisive step in rectifying that oversight.Moving the discussion to a more specific context, Jon Stobart notes that the clergy as a distinct social and cultural group have been largely overlooked in studies of consumption and domestic material culture.In those few studies that do exist, he observes, primary consideration is given to clergy at the episcopal level rather than to those at the parish level, resulting in a near-total absence in the historiography of this large and influential social group.In this new study, Stobart gives the English parish clergy their due, bringing their consumer behavior and domestic material culture to the fore.By placing the parish clergy into the socio-spatial context of their homes and tying them to broader changes in domestic material culture, Stobart contends that we can gain a better understanding of who they were as people.As the book's title suggests, the author considers the moral and ethical dimensions of consumer behavior to help explain the particular character of clerical consumption.He moves far beyond established narratives of goods as markers of status, wealth, and re-