Anne Oldfield’s Domestic Interiors: Auctions, Material Culture and Celebrity

This chapter focuses on the home of the leading actress, Anne Oldfield (1683–1730), a figure central to early constructions of celebrity. Focusing on the auction catalogue for Oldfield’s home at 60 Grosvenor Street, London, the chapter explores how this unique document enables us to reconstruct Oldfield’s domestic interiors, opening up new ways of understanding her taste, wealth and professional success. Auctions were not merely a place to buy goods, but also a site of theatrical spectacle and fashionable sociability. Arranged by the leading auctioneer, Christopher Cock, the chapter argues that when read alongside contemporary satires and accounts of auctions, the Oldfield catalogue allows us to glimpse a fascinating means through which Oldfield’s home came to serve as a site for the consumption of her celebrity.