Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780â€"1840

This book explores the origins of the influential view of modern society that places a "middle class" at its center, as it developed in Britain during the so-called "Industrial Revolution." Using a wider variety of sources and closer methods of textual analysis than previous studies of languages of class, the author develops a nuanced model for the interplay of social reality and social language. He demonstrates that a "middle class"-based language of social description did not simply reflect changes in social structure, but was rather the outcome of political circumstances in a period of radical political change.

The book shows how representations of society focused on a 'middle class' were infused from the French Revolution onwards with highly charged meanings, meanings that then changed radically under different political circumstances. The author uncovers the historically specific origins and the contingent logic of those characterizations of the middle class that we take today as given, from the narrative of its inexorable rise, through its key role in modern society, to its famous embodiment in domesticity.