Book contents
- Keeping Hold
- Keeping Hold
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Challenging Property and Possession
- Part II Seeking Return
- Part III Learning from Loss
- 5 Describing and Knowing Possessions
- 6 Valuing Possessions
- 7 Selfhood and the Importance of Keeping Hold
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Valuing Possessions
from Part III - Learning from Loss
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2026
Book contents
- Keeping Hold
- Keeping Hold
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Challenging Property and Possession
- Part II Seeking Return
- Part III Learning from Loss
- 5 Describing and Knowing Possessions
- 6 Valuing Possessions
- 7 Selfhood and the Importance of Keeping Hold
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 6 begins the work of examining why people expended so much time, effort, money and skill on reclaiming their lost possessions. It explores this question by looking to the rewards offered in ‘lost’ and ‘runaway’ notices and using them to investigate the different values at stake in possessions. It finds that ‘possessions’ such as watches, financial instruments, dogs and people held a range of values in the eighteenth century. Rather than marked by market values as the use of rewards might suggest, these ‘things’ were also valuable for the roles they fulfilled and the emotional or cultural importance they held. As with the previous chapter, by looking to the question of value, we begin to understand how ‘possessions’ were differentiated in this period. Such an insight becomes more apparent when the chapter explores not only the rewards offered, but also what they were offered for.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Keeping HoldA Cultural and Social History of Possession in Eighteenth-Century Britain, pp. 179 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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