Pounds and Pedigrees: The Upper Class in Victoria, 1850–80 by Paul de Serville

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Marks on foredges. Mark on back of half-title page. Dust jacket has creasing at edges and at spine. Foxing to inside dust jacket. Some fading to dust jacket. Body text and binding are still very good.

Pounds and Pedigrees surveys Victoria's upper class, and examines its composition, character, internal rivalries and contradictions, its attitudes towards gentility and equality, and its formal organisations, the clubs of Melbourne. The study ends in 1880 on the eve of the Boom, which was to transform and then destroy the most energetic colony of Australasia.

Included is a who's who of colonial society between 1850 and 1880. It contains over 2000 biographical entries of clubmen, landowners, and gentlemen immigrants.