The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial City 1840-1914

The public culture of the Victorian middle class looks at the creation of a distinctive 'high' culture in the industrial cities of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester in the mid-nineteenth century and its incipient decline from the 1880s.

The history of urban bourgeois culture has been relatively unexplored and under-theorised compared to popular culture. This volume therefore represents a significant contribution both to the study of middle-class cultural forms and to an understanding of the relationship between culture and power. In particular, it argues for the importance of ritualised modes of social behaviour in understanding the construction of authority in the nineteenth-century city. As well as many original arguments, the book provides a clear and useful overview of the public cultures of Victorian 'respectability'.

The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the areas of social history, cultural history, urban history, cultural studies, urban studies and the sociology of culture.

Author: Simon Gunn
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 08/09/2007
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.46d
ISBN13: 9780719075469
ISBN10: 0719075467
BISAC Categories:
- History | Europe | Great Britain | General
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social

About the Author

Simon Gunn is Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester