First published in 1977. This book records the emergence of a lower middle class in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Victorian society had always contained a marginal middle class of shopkeepers and small businessmen, but in the closing decades of the nineteenth century the growth of white-collar salaried occupations created a new and distinctive force in the social structure. These essays look at the place of the lower middle class within British society and examine its ideals and values. Some essays concentrate on occupational groups – clerks and shopkeepers – while others focus on aspects of lower middle class life – religion, housing and jingoism. This title will be of interest to students of history.

First published in 1985. Too often aspects of working-class life have been treated as distinct and separate. The contributors to this volume are aware of the dangers of such atomisation and have attempted to bring together a collection of studies which add to our knowledge of life in that time. The examinations of family, health, work, leisure and criminal trends form the basis of this work, and suggest that the everyday lives and values of the working-class were even more varied, creative and complex than is generally believed. This title will be of interest to students of history.

Based on considerable empirical research, this second volume of an analytical history of social power deals with power relations between the Industrial Revolution and the First World War, focusing on France, Great Britain, Hapsburg Austria, Prussia/Germany and the United States.

Matteo Battistini offers a critical deconstruction of the fetish of the middle class. Social sciences strive to transform an image of labour and capital as opposing forces into a consensual order wherein capitalism and democracy could coexist without tension.

This collection of essaysexplores how Progressivism was the historical catalyst for reforms across the social and political spectrum in Britain for over half a century.