City, class and culture: Studies of social policy and cultural production in Victorian Manchester

Eight essays, plus an introduction by the editor, examine the history of the Victorian middle class and cultural production in the nineteenth century city. Part 1 focuses on the ideological and institutional structure of middle class policy towards the working class and elements within it, including the introduction of the new police; the treatment of the casual poor; attitudes toward the Jewish immigrant community; and the key area of middle class cultural and philanthropic institutions. Part 2 develops the concern with ideological structures into the area of cultural policy and literary production, including the establishment of art as rational recreation; the failure of the poetic mode to emerge in Victorian Manchester; the periodical press as an element in class relations; and the fictional representation of class relations and history in Manchester. Part 3 contains a preliminary bibliography of nineteenth-century Manchester. Contributors are mainly historians. Kidd and Roberts are Senior Lecturers in History at Manchester Polytechnic. Index