MISER’S PURSE

The majority of miser’s purses were homemade by amateur needlewomen. As Mr. Bingley notes in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), all accomplished ladies could ‘paint tables, cover screens and net purses’. Purses were often given as tokens of love as in the novel Vanity Fair (1847) when Becky Sharp makes a purse of green silk for Joseph Sedley.