Family Fortunes has become a seminal text in class and gender history. Published to wide critical acclaim in 1987, its influence in the field continues to be extensive. It has cast new light on the perception of middle-class society and gender relations between 1780 and 1850. This revised edition contains a substantial new introduction, placing the original survey in its historiographical context. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall evaluate the readings their text has received and broaden their study by taking into account recent developments and shifts in the field. They apply current perceptions of history to their original project, and see new motives and meanings emerge that reinforce their argument.

Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1750-1850

Politics & Social Sciences

Davidoff, Leonore

Hall, Catherine

Social Sciences

Taylor & Francis Books Ltd

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

Routledge

"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

Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Women in Culture and Society)

History

University of Chicago Press

"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

Europe

Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867

How did the English get to be English? In Civilising Subjects, Catherine Hall argues that the idea of empire was at the heart of mid-nineteenth-century British self-imagining, with peoples such as the "Aborigines" in Australia and the "negroes" in Jamaica serving as markers of difference separating "civilised" English from "savage" others.Hall uses the stories of two groups of Englishmen and -women to explore British self-constructions both in the colonies and at home. In Jamaica, a group of Baptist missionaries hoped to make African-Jamaicans into people like themselves, only to be disappointed when the project proved neither simple nor congenial to the black men and women for whom they hoped to fashion new selves. And in Birmingham, abolitionist enthusiasm dominated the city in the 1830s, but by the 1860s, a harsher racial vocabulary reflected a new perception of the nonwhite subjects of empire as different kinds of men from the "manly citizens" of Birmingham.This absorbing study of the "racing" of Englishness will be invaluable for imperial and cultural historians.

How did the English get to be English? In Civilising Subjects, Catherine Hall argues that the idea of empire was at the heart of mid-nineteenth-century British self-imagining, with peoples such as the "Aborigines" in Australia and the "negroes" in Jamaica serving as markers of difference separating "civilised" English from "savage" others. Hall uses the stories of two groups of Englishmen and -women to explore British self-constructions both in the colonies and at home. In Jamaica, a group of Baptist missionaries hoped to make African-Jamaicans into people like themselves, only to be disappointed when the project proved neither simple nor congenial to the black men and women for whom they hoped to fashion new selves. And in Birmingham, abolitionist enthusiasm dominated the city in the 1830s, but by the 1860s, a harsher racial vocabulary reflected a new perception of the nonwhite subjects of empire as different kinds of men from the "manly citizens" of Birmingham. This absorbing study of the "racing" of Englishness will be invaluable for imperial and cultural historians.

The University of Chicago Press

Thomas Babington Macaulay’s History of England was a phenomenal Victorian best-seller defining a nation’s sense of self, its triumphant rise to a powerfully homogenous nation built on a global empire and its claim to be the modern nation, marking the route to civilization for all others. In this book Catherine Hall explores the emotional, intellectual, and political roots of Zachary Macaulay, the leading abolitionist, and his son Thomas’s visions of race, nation, and empire. The contrasting moments of evangelical humanitarianism and liberal imperialism are read through the writings and careers of the two men.

Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Yale University Press

Family Fortunes: Men and women of the English Middle Class 1750-1850

First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

White, Male and Middle-Class: Explorations in Feminism and History

First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &amp; Francis, an informa company.

White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History

Americas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hall, Catherine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hall, Catherine

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hall, Catherine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1750-1850

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

Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Women in Culture and Society)

Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Women in Culture and Society)

Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867

Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867

Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain

Family Fortunes: Men and women of the English Middle Class 1750-1850

White, Male and Middle-Class: Explorations in Feminism and History

White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History