One of the particular concerns of the Victorians was the notion of 'taste' and the idea that good taste in any field - clothing, decor, landscape, music, art, even food - meant good taste in all, and that tastefulness was a reliable sign of moral sensitivity, indeed of national, even racial, quality. Moral Taste is a study of the ideological work done by the equation of good taste and moral refinement in a selection of nineteenth-century writings.

Drawing on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Marjorie Garson discusses a number of Victorian texts that treat aesthetic refinement...