When reading a book like the Count of Monte Chriato or Scherlock Holmes, they mention that this and this person has an income of 4000 pounds and that person will have this and this income when she marries.
How does that work? Most of these people do not do any actual job.
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Such people were nobility and gentry (the difference between the two usually being that gentry didn’t have noble titles). Most land in Europe (and also Asia, come to think of it) was owned by nobility and gentry and tenant farmers would pay them to live on and farm that land. It was considered a point of pride that they didn’t have to hold any other type of employment and that was what marked them as part of the upper class.
Depending on the place, the nobility and gentry made up somewhere between 1-10% of the population, but 80-90% of land was owned by them. There’s an excellent, though long, history book, *The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy* that talks about land ownership, rents, and more, in addition to how it was that their political power and wealth began to seriously decline from the 1870s onward.
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