Imagining the Middle Class

'For all those interested in the question whether class is best seen as a category of social and economic history or as an artefact of political discourse, Imagining the Middle Class is essential - and fascinating - reading.' Gareth Stedman Jones, King's College, Cambridge

• 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.