Imagining the Middle Class: The Political

Why and how did the British people come to see themselves as living in a society centred around a middle class? The answer provided by Professor Wahrman challenges most prevalent historical narratives: the key to understanding changes in conceptualisations of society, the author argues, lies not in underlying transformations of social structure - in this case industrialisation, which supposedly created and empowered the middle class - but rather in changing political configurations. Firmly grounded in a close reading of an extensive array of sources, and supported by comparative perspectives on France and America, the book offers a nuanced model for the interplay between social reality, politics, and the languages of class.

1. Imagining the 'middle class': an introduction
Part I. Against the Tide: Prelude to the 1790s: was the French Revolution a 'bourgeois revolution'?
2. The uses of 'middle class' language in the 1790s
3. Friends and foes of the 'middle class': the dialogic imagination
4. The political differentiation of social language: the debate on the triple assessment
Postlude to the 1790s: the uses of 'bourgeois revolution'
Part II. The Tug of War: 5. Taming the 'middle class'
6. The tug of war and its resolution
Part III. With the Tide: 7. The social construction of the middle class
8. The parallels across the Channel: a French aside
9. The debates on the Reform Bill: bowing to a new representation of the 'middle class'
10. Inventing the ever-rising 'middle class': the aftermath of 1832
11. 1832 and the 'middle class' conquest of the 'private sphere'
Epilogue.

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

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Table of Contents

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