Imagining inclusive society in nineteenth-century novels

"Using nineteenth-century novels and other Victorian literature, Pam Morris traces a dramatic transformation of British public consciousness that occurred during the brief period between the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867. Naturalized acceptance of social hierarchy gave way to general imagining of a modern mass culture. Central to this collective revisioning of social relationships was the pressure to restyle political leadership in terms of popular legitimacy, to develop a more inclusive mode of discourse within an increasingly heterogeneous public sphere, and to find new ways of inscribing social distinctions and exclusions."--BOOK JACKET.