Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 - Softcover

Davidoff, Leonore; Hall, Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0091647010 ISBN 13: 9780091647018

Publisher: Routledge, 1987

Synopsis

"Family Fortunes is a major groundbreaking study that will become a classic in its field. I was fascinated by the information it provided and the argument it established about the role of gender in the construction of middle-class values, family life, and property relations.

"The book explores how the middle class constructed its own institutions, material culture and values during the industrial revolution, looking at two settings—urban manufacturing Birmingham and rural Essex—both centers of active capitalist development. The use of sources is dazzling: family business records, architectural designs, diaries, wills and trusts, newspapers, prescriptive literature, sermons, manuscript census tracts, the papers of philanthropic societies, popular fiction, and poetry.

"Family Fortunes occupies a place beside Mary Ryan's The Cradle of the Middle Class and Suzanne Lebsock's Free Women of Petersburg. It provides scholars with a definitive study of the middle class in England, and facilitates a comparative perspective on the history of middle-class women, property, and the family."—Judith Walkowitz, Johns Hopkins University

About this title

Review:

'Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall fascinatingly retell the familiar story of the rising middle class This book convincingly demonstrates that the makers of the English bourgeoisie were women as well as men.' - The Observer; 'Deeply Interesting, superbly researched excellent source material documented, analysed and integrated in this monumental book as never before.' - The Times Literary Supplement; 'Intense, richly informative and suggestive descriptions of both familiar and forgotten worlds. In its combination of fresh discovery and compelling reiteration of the familiar this is a rare book.' - New Society; 'Weighty, meticulous, satisfying' - Women's Review; 'This book will certainly be widely read and is destined to become a standard source.' - Network; 'Property read, this is a subversive book which challenges received notions of both the personal and the political.' - The Guardian

About the Author:

Lenore Davidoff is senior lecturer in social history in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. Catherine Hall is senior lecturer in cultural history at the Polytechnic of East London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0091647010
• ISBN 13: 9780091647018
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576