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people used to make large statements about the novel being of the middle-classes and poetry belonging to the top and bottom of society. I'd be interested who you had in mind David, was it Northrop Frye? In reply to Jamie, I can't indeed think of many exceptions to what you say, but I do remember that Chaucer's middle-class-ness has often been acclaimed as a positive virtue. Donald R. Howard, e.g., wrote inspiringly about that. I also remember C.S Lewis speaking in praise of the middle classes as the class that created (among much else) nearly all our literature. That was of course just an assertion, when what is really needed is research. But given that literacy hardly extended to the working classes until the mid-19th C, it's a reasonable assumption that the body of English poetry that's been written down is predominantly the work of middle-class authors.