Middle Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century - by L Young (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Drawing on expressive and material culture, Young shows that money was not enough to make the genteel middle class. It required exquisite self-control and the right cultural capital to perform ritual etiquette and present oneself confidently, yet modestly. She argues that genteel culture was not merely derivative, but a re-working of aristocratic standards in the context of the middle class necessity to work. Visible throughout the English-speaking world in the 1780s -1830s and onward, genteel culture reveals continuities often obscured by studies based entirely on national frameworks.

Review Quotes

'Linda Young's excellent study will be indispensable to students of Nineteenth-century material culture, whether in England, the United States, or Australia. Whether writing of deportment or jewellery, piano-playing or taking a bath, she ably shows the standards and practices through which the rising middle-classes sought to establish their sense of identity. Lucid, detailed, and insightful, Young's study fascinatingly points up the continuities and correspondences that went to make the emergent bourgeoisie a truly global phenomenon.' - Kate Flint, Rutgers University

'She [Linda Young] has set herself the hugely ambitious task of summarizing nineteenth-century in Australia, America, and Britain in two hundred pages. Her book is perceptive, theoretically sophisticated, and a useful additin to the middle-class history library.' - H-Net Reviews (H-Albion)

About the Author

LINDA YOUNG is a historian by discipline and a curator by trade, teaching Cultural Heritage Management at the University of Canberra. As a scholar and a heritage practitioner, she is especially interested in the intersection of the history and the material culture of domestic life, as expressed in feminist history and historic houses.