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In the present study, the term ‘middle class’ is understood loosely as those groups who were neither dependent on manual labour nor lived on the interests of their capital. It was a small, emerging but immensely vociferous group which did not fit neatly into any of the four estates (nobility, priesthood, burghers and peasantry). Statistics referred to them as ‘non-noble persons of standing’.
// Tjeder, David, The power of character: Middle-class masculinities, 1800–1900. 320 pp. Department of History, Stockholm University. Stockholm. |