Middle Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain [Hardcover]

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.Introduction Cultural Baggage: The Genteel World In-between: The Problem of the Middle Class The Civilising Process: The Morphology of Gentility Under Control: The Genteel Body Best Behaviour: Public Relationships Correct Taste: The Material Conditions of Gentility Conclusion End Notes Bibliography

'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)