In this very readable volume, Stephanie Foote gathers a range of print sources--from novels by Edith Wharton and Henry James to gossip columns, fashion magazines, popular novels, and etiquette manuals--to ask how the realist period understood the individual experience of class. Examining the female arriviste (the parvenu of the title) in turn-of-the-century New York (where a supposedly stable elite was threatened by the nouveaux riches), Foote shows how class became more than just an economic position: it was a fundamental part of individual identity, exemplified by a shifting set of social behaviors that form the core of many nineteenth-century novels. She persuasively presents the female parvenu as a key figure in turn-of-the-century culture that embodies the volatility of social standing and the continuing project of structuring and justifying it.

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Product Description: Three years after We Walk Alone, Ann Aldrich expands on her journalistic portraits of lesbian subcultures in and around New York to include: class questions; the diverse jobs lesbians held; social cliques; differences among the “Village,” “Uptown,” and Brooklyn communities; and hints at the growing consciousness that would fuel later lesbian and gay rights movements...read more

Product Description: Ann Aldrich flings a provocative assertion at her readers in 1955 when she opens her groundbreaking account of lesbian life in New York City by saying this book is the "result of fifteen years of participation in society as a female homosexual...read more