This is a wonderful and ambitious book. It attempts to rehabilitate questioned analytic concepts, like class, while at the same time utilizing more fashionable categories, like gender. Using the rich archival materials of the city of Leeds, which R. J. Morris has exploited to such good effect in previous works, he shows us the practical results of the complex interactions between deep structural imperatives and personal and economic contingencies that make up the history, both familial and architectural, of that city. And for a hardheaded, no-nonsense sort of historian, whose pages betray a perhaps too-great fondness for graphs, he is surprisingly familiar with and supple in the use of literary sources and memoirs.

Unlike more conventional histories, Morris jumps right in, beginning with a microhistorical account of the Oates family, caught at a critical transitional moment. The father of the family had just died, and his grown children were confronted with the dual burdens of making an equitable division of the estate, while ensuring the family's continuing economic prosperity and stability. At the same time, we are told of the vagaries of the life of the Oateses: Joseph Henry's piles; his brother George's difficult personality; the connection, through the marriage of their sister Sarah, with Manchester and a partner-cousin in the family firm, George William Wood; the nursing activities of their unmarried sister, Mary; and the need for capital for investment in London by Edward, youngest brother of the family. Family life and economic life for this family, and, as Morris goes on to show us, for many others like them, was intimately and unavoidably intermeshed.

In some ways chapter 2, “In Search of the British Middle Class,” provides a broad account of the ideological, demographic, and historiographical background of the family we have just left. In a condensed and somewhat abbreviated fashion, Morris describes the state of middle-class self-understanding during this almost 100-year period, before turning to the demographic and economic changes that middle-class families experienced in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. And, in the midst of an unprecedented increase in wealth and material prosperity came both widening disparities in wealth and situation within the middle class itself and an increased anxiety about economic insecurity. It was this continuing insecurity that, Morris explains, drove many middle-class men to work so hard at increasing their familial holdings, for, as he notes, until the end of the period, the family was the only institution in which risk and insecurity could be mediated and spread. This very long chapter ends with a rather muted though central historiographical discussion about the hesitancy among historians to use the concept of class. Morris argues that class is neither entirely a product of “objective” economic circumstances nor merely a cultural or social label or descriptor. For him, “class was about power and conflict” (68), though, in fact, when he comes to identify men whom he calls “middle class,” he relies on poll books and trade directories, noting that while most were shopkeepers and independent craftsmen, professionals and merchants often assumed public leadership roles.

These first two chapters serve as a sort of historical hors d’oeuvre, an antipasto both to heighten and pique our interest and provide the background beverage we will need to understand the remaining chapters. This is a most unusual structure for historical narrative, and while Morris's inventiveness and audacity are admirable, a slower and more conventional presentation might have given the reader some much-needed background, both large and small. The story begins in 1825, exactly halfway through the period covered by the book, with the correspondence of two brothers, one in Leeds and the other in London, about their father's estate. A brief summary of the sort of place Leeds was in 1825 would have been useful, and an even briefer account of its evolution over the previous forty-five years could only have helped set the stage. Many themes that will be discussed later in greater length, like ill-health, old age, and gender strategies, are touched on here and dropped. The pace is hectic, the effect slightly like seasickness. The reader needs to be reassured that these important topics will be returned to and are, in fact, what the book is about.

Chapters 3 and 4 introduce two of the central sources for this account: the wills and accounts left by many middling men and women of Leeds during this period. This is a marvelous, juicy chapter, full of all sorts of important information and interesting ruminations. The discussion is always balanced, with Morris showing in concrete fashion how, in crafting their wills, “individuals select from a repertoire of strategies in response to a variety of pressures” (141). He also notes that will makers could be categorized as either “things,” “real estate,” or “categories” people, though overlap in these modes existed. Most women who left wills were “things” people, specifying particular possessions to be left to particular persons. “Real estate” wills, usually written by shopkeepers or craftspeople, apportioned particular plots of real estate to named persons, while “categories” people, the dominant group, ordered all property to be sold and redistributed equally among heirs. This last sort of partible and equal inheritance set the pattern and created the fortunes and futures, Morris argues, of middle-class men and women for at least three crucial generations. His study of account books and what accounting practices meant to their creators is equally interesting and innovative. His dissection of these accounts shows us how families employed a variety of strategies, at different points in individual life cycles, to maximize economic security while simultaneously providing the requisite resources for each gender and age of its members.

Chapter 5 is a grab bag of case studies in which Morris shows us the effects of various family strategies on the urban landscape over three generations. But the effect of this material is somewhat blunted by the number of such cases included. While this is undoubtedly necessary to demonstrate the “heterogeneity of the real property choices” (232) employed by the middle class, the force of the argument is weakened by the somewhat ponderous presentation of the evidence.

Chapters 6 and 7 deal with methods employed in wills to provide for women and children, introducing the central instrument of the trust and stressing the importance of belonging to a “networked family with nuclear families and other forms of household embedded within it” (264). Chapter 8, using the quasi-memoirs of two middle-class women of the period, deals with the ways in which such family strategies and networks were experienced and remembered, demonstrating the ways in which culture and structure, personal decisions, and the exigencies of the market came together. The remaining chapters serve as a conclusion to the work, stressing the centrality of insecurities and uncertainties of all sorts through the period and the ways in which middle-class families, in their attempts to protect themselves, created an age of heroic capitalism.

This book is packed with a wealth of material that has not been, and could not be, discussed in any moderate-length review. While it requires a fair amount of effort to understand and digest the storehouse of material presented, it is a challenging, rewarding, and important accomplishment.