This book explores the origins of the view of modern society that places a 'middle class' at its centre during the Industrial Revolution. It responds to the newly fashionable and rapidly expanding field of middle class studies, while challenging its fundamental assumptions and offering radically new methods and perspectives.

1. Imagining the 'middle class': an introduction; Part I. Against the Tide: Prelude to the 1790s: was the French Revolution a 'bourgeois revolution'?; 2. The uses of 'middle class' language in the 1790s; 3. Friends and foes of the 'middle class': the dialogic imagination; 4. The political differentiation of social language: the debate on the triple assessment; Postlude to the 1790s: the uses of 'bourgeois revolution'; Part II. The Tug of War: 5. Taming the 'middle class'; 6. The tug of war and its resolution; Part III. With the Tide: 7. The social construction of the middle class; 8. The parallels across the Channel: a French aside; 9. The debates on the Reform Bill: bowing to a new representation of the 'middle class'; 10. Inventing the ever-rising 'middle class': the aftermath of 1832; 11. 1832 and the 'middle class' conquest of the 'private sphere'; Epilogue.