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University of Chicago Press

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

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Title
Title: Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850
Author: Leonore Davidoff
ISBN: 9780226137339
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1991
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Edition: 1
Number of Pages: 576
Condition Note: Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description: "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