Victorian Fictions of Middle-Class Status

Reconstructs the surprising, self-interested, at times paradoxical attempts of Victorian novelists to define the limits of middle-class status Adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines sociological theory, social and political history, and literary history and critiqueMakes a timely contribution to a long tradition of socio-literary study that both stretches back to the nineteenth century itself (i.e., Hippolyte Taine’s History of English Literature [1863]) and engages with contemporary