The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century

Front Matter....Pages i-ix
Introduction....Pages 1-8
Front Matter....Pages 9-9
Goodbye to the Marketplace: Food and Exclusivity in Nineteenth-Century New York....Pages 11-26
“Natural Distinction”: The American Bourgeois Search for Distinctive Signs in Europe....Pages 27-44
Henry James and the American Evolution of the Snob....Pages 45-61
Patina and Persistence: Miniature Patronage and Production in Antebellum Philadelphia....Pages 63-85
The “Blending and Confusion” of Expensiveness and Beauty: Bourgeois Interiors....Pages 87-100
Front Matter....Pages 101-101
Bourgeois Institution Builders: New York in the Nineteenth Century....Pages 103-117
The Steady Supporters of Order: American Mechanics’ Institute Fairs as Icons of Bourgeois Culture....Pages 119-134
A Noble Pursuit?: Bourgeois America’s Uses of Lineage....Pages 135-151
Elite Women and Class Formation....Pages 153-166
Rediscovering the Bourgeoisie: Higher Education and Governing-Class Formation in the United States, 1870–1914....Pages 167-189
Front Matter....Pages 191-191
Ordering the Social Sphere: Public Art and Boston’s Bourgeoisie....Pages 193-208
The Problem of Chicago....Pages 209-232
Bourgeois Appropriation of Music: Challenging Ethnicity, Class, and Gender....Pages 233-246
The Birth of the American Art Museum....Pages 247-256
The Manufactured Patron: Staging Bourgeois Identity through Art Consumption in Postbellum America....Pages 257-276
Back Matter....Pages 277-284