The Pleasures of Austerity

This article challenges the paradigm of untrammelled consumer pleasures in the G eorgian era by exploring the various motivations for disengagement from the dominant social codes of polite consumption. It examines the use of the terms ‘austere’ and ‘austerity’ in G eorgian print culture, and the censure that resulted from being thus described. The religious and philosophical underpinnings of austerity as a stand against dominant modes of Anglicanism are considered, concluding with a case study of the fashionable physician G eorge C heyne, whose struggle to control his own obesity led to the formulation of a medical and dietary solution to over‐consumption.