ABSTRACT
Among the most significant and enduring coinages of the eighteenth century was the term middle class, which first began to be used in a systematic way in the years after the outbreak of the French Revolution. This term signified a consciousness that an amalgam of social groups-the untitled gentry, the richer merchants, trades people, and professionals-had political interests in common, as well as important cultural affinities that had developed during the preceding century. A century later, the idea that society consisted of three distinct classes had become one of the most pervasive and normative assumptions in literate culture. While converted into material categories by Marx and his admirers, “social class” was, to cite Dror Wahrman, quite arguably an “imaginary” construct. The idea of the “middle class” concealed deep internal fissures and conflicts. Authors who deployed this term anxiously sought unifying values and practices in order to provide the sense of unity upon which a range of material, national, and imperial interests depended. If the “middle class” began as convenient fiction, it had to be made into a reality that guided both life and thought, a goal executed through education both in schools and through the vehicle of print culture in general.1
