Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast

This book vividly reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the city's greatest growth, between the 1830s and the 1880s. It explores the public and inner lives of Victorian bourgeois families, including leading business families like the Corrys and the Workmans, who dominated civic affairs and invested in improving the city. The social group displayed a strong work ethic, business-oriented attitude, and religious commitment, and its female members led active lives in family, church, and philanthropy. The book offers a fresh examination of familiar themes in Irish social history.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 376 pages
Publication date: 01 August 2022
Publisher: Liverpool University Press

This captivating book vividly reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the city's most prosperous era, spanning from the 1830s to the 1880s. Through the use of extensive primary material, including personal correspondence, memoirs, diaries, and newspapers, the author paints a rich portrait of Belfast society, delving into both the public and private lives of Victorian bourgeois families. Leading business families such as the Corrys and the Workmans, alongside their professional counterparts, dominated Victorian Belfast's civic affairs, taking pride in their locale and investing their time and resources in its improvement. This social group exhibited a strong work ethic, a business-oriented mindset, and religious commitment, with its female members actively participating in family, church, and philanthropic endeavors. While the Belfast bourgeoisie shared similarities with other British urban elites, they inhabited a unique place and time: 'Linenopolis' was the only industrial city in Ireland, a city that straddled the boundaries between Irish and British cultures, and coincided with the emergence of an unusually violent form of sectarianism.

Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast offers a fresh perspective on familiar themes such as civic activism, working lives, philanthropy, associational culture, evangelism, recreation, marriage and family life, and makes a substantial and valuable contribution to Irish social history.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781802076912