Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The department store was brought to its first peak in the middle of the 19th century in Paris. It was seized on and developed as a central feature of American urban life by the pioneers based particularly in Chicago. Subsequently Gordon Selfridge left Chicago to bring the idea to London in the early 20th century.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Based heavily on secondary sources, this book surveys the history of an important retail institution in Britain from the early 19th century to the present, though developments after WW II receive little attention because Lancaster plans a separate book on the topic. The author devotes an illuminating chapter to Gordon Selfridge, who resigned from Marshall Fields in Chicago to found his famed store in London, which helped transform the industry. Lancaster also gives considerable attention to the role of women in the success of department stores, both as sellers and as active consumers of fashionable goods. He joins those commentators who reject conspiratorial notions of production and consumption, although on this contentious issue he offers little beyond a summary of other theorists. The book's strongest chapters concern the interwar era, when department stores adopted a number of strategies to adjust to increased competition from other retailers. Lancaster is particularly alert to regional variations among stores in Britain. His reliance on the scholarship of others, however, limits the new information and original insight that he brings to his story. Upper-division undergraduates. D. L. LeMahieu Lake Forest College