This article seeks to mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Leonore Davidoff & Catherine Hall’s Family Fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850. Given the enormous shifts in the historical discipline since its publication, it seeks to assess the work’s relevance for today’s audience. A consideration of the book’s initial reception provides a reminder of the intellectual climate in which it was published. Whilst this reinforces a sense of the distance the discipline has since travelled, the discussion also points to the richness and perceptiveness of many of those early reviews. The ‘viewpoint’ speculates upon the likely impact of recent developments within both gender history and the social sciences for future treatments of the book’s central themes.
