The keeping of accounts was widely practiced by members of the gentry in the early modern period. More of those that survive were written by men, but household accounts by gentlewomen from the sixteenth century onward are not uncommon, and one particularly exceptional set forms the basis of this volume. Between 1610 and 1653, Lady Alice Le Strange of Hunstanton kept a series of household accounts that her husband, Sir Hamon, had begun in 1606. As the authors note, Alice was “an exceptionally meticulous and systematic accountant,” making this set of accounts “as complete a record of the consumption activities of one historic household as we could hope for” (1). The source material is unusually rich and varied, providing information on numerous areas of consumption—durable goods, consumables, labor, and services—as well as expenditure patterns over a relatively long period of time. The fact that it is concerned less with the novel and more with the mundane is a great part of its strength and value for historians.

The authors have used a range of approaches to analyze their material. Consumption is interrogated through material culture and the interpretation of its meanings, through gift giving and commodities, through everyday activities, and through the use of objects to construct identities. As its title suggests, the book is also about gender, because “from the Bible onwards, the male household head was charged with bringing income into the household and his wife with household management” (26). Though legally dependent on her husband, a wife was responsible for the running of her household, and the success or failure of the “family” unit could rest on her decisions. Gentlewomen were therefore taught the basics of arithmetic and trained in the “casting” of accounts from an early age. Then, as now, many household duties were repetitive and mundane and revolved around issues of food purchase and preparation, the cleaning and maintenance of the household and its contents, and the care of children. Indeed, the reality of continually providing a household of around twenty-five people with the items it needed on a daily basis offers “an alternative view to approaches which emphasize the pleasures of consumption” (11). But if consumption has more commonly been associated with female identity—and often to its detriment—the book also engages with the importance of consumption for men, arguing that “its centrality to their assertion of social status is often overlooked” (13). While Alice's consumption identity appears to have been dominated by the needs of the household, that of Hamon was more closely linked to his personal status and interests. During his visits to Norwich and London, he bought a range of accoutrements associated with contemporary gentry culture, from beaver hats to scientific instruments, hawking equipment, and weapons.

The surviving accounts fall under three headings: receipt accounts, disbursement accounts, and kitchen accounts. The enormity of the information available means that the authors have had to be selective in their approach, choosing at some times to focus in on particular aspects and at others to take a broader, more general, approach. The kitchen accounts, for example—which provide a weekly record of food consumed and received—do not begin until 1619 but thereafter form the largest part of the record. Consequently, a detailed analysis of the period 1619–21 forms the focus of the main analysis of food production and diet. Similarly, the disbursement accounts of 1620–36, which cover the period when the children were growing up and the house at Hunstanton was extended, offer the greatest amount of information on purchases of furnishings and clothing.

The book is thematic in its formulation, looking at seven areas of interest: household management, the acquisition of goods, everyday consumables, material culture, family life cycle and consumption, elite consumption, and the employment of labor. Within each theme the authors lay out their analysis, engage with issues of historiography, and enlighten and enrich discussion with delightful excerpts from the jest book of Nicholas Le Strange, Alice's eldest son. The book offers an incredible amount of detail on almost any area of early seventeenth-century gentry life that curious researchers could wish to investigate. But it is so much more than an antiquarian delight. In terms of economic change, it offers novel insights into the nature of production in the gentry household; it considers the effects of the London season on the local economy; and it adds to our understanding of the relationship between food and the gift economy. In terms of gender, it reveals the importance of linen for women (and of textiles more generally as an area of expenditure); that women were expected to have higher standards of cleanliness than men; and that some women, at least, enjoyed a bawdy joke. And while it challenges some received ideas—about the role of the gentry in emulation and about the role of women and men as purchasers of goods—it confirms others. Debt remained a central feature of life for gentry families in the early seventeenth century, and it was the lifestyle choice of the husband that determined the overall pattern of consumption

Above all, however, it reveals consumption as an area that was in constant flux. There were signs of continuity with some areas of later medieval practice—beef and bread were core dietary staples, and girls were still educated at home—but “much of what the Le Stranges were doing between 1610 and 1650 was new” (240). As well as investing in new fabrics, sending their sons to university and the Inns of Court, and engaging with science and literature, they “ate turkey, artichokes, cherries, cabbage and sugar comfits, drank beer, washed with white soap and heated their house with coal” (240). The book is a wonderful addition to early modern history and historiography; no one interested in the period should be without it.