The Worst Poverty; A History of Debts and Debtors

by Barty-King, Hugh

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Book Description

Phoenix Mill, UK: Budding Books, 1997. Reprint. Hard Cover. New/New. Photographs, Drawings, Letters. 'Debt is the worst poverty' runs an old proverb. Whether by misfortune or mismanagement, debt has continually brought misery to the minority - just as much in previous centuries as in the credit society of the 1990s. In this fascinating and highly readable book, Hugh Barty-King provides a well-researched insight into the behaviour of the age-old principles involved: Buyer/debtor and selller/creditor, money-borrower and money-lender, banker, mortgager, pawnbroker - and those on the sidelines who set the rules and offer advice such as lawmakers, preachers, leader writers, tract writers, playwrights and authors. Chapter one is set in the Middle Ages when credit was based upon 'the exchange of two deferred promises'. As the story unfolds, chapter by chapter through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, further intriguing facts about debt emerge. For some, debt was a way of lilfe; for others, like Lord Chesterfield and Samuel Smiles, a state to be avoided at all costs, and for Lady Hamilton, to be ignored until there were no ex-lovers to save her from the Sponging House. In more recent times overindebtedness has often become the only way out, with banks, building societies and high-street stores only too eager to provide 'easy' credit in an attempt to encourage the customer to spend, spend, spend. Illustrated informatively throughout. 214 pages including a bibliography and index. The binding is a glossy pictorial, same as the jacket. The jacket back has a few small wrinkles and a 4" diagonal wrinkle. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.

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