The Victorian Studies Reader by
Selected as an 'Outstanding Academic Title' in the 2008 CHOICE awards, The Victorian Studies Reader gathers together, in one volume, some of the key pieces on Victorian history, society and culture. The book draws on new trends in looking at the Victorian Age and includes sections on: periodization politics consumerism intellectual life sexuality empire. The Victorian Studies Reader is a rich resource, essential for all those studying this important period of history.
Chartism by
Chartism, the mass movement for democratic rights, dominated British domestic politics in the late 1830s and 1840s. It mobilised over three million supporters at its height. Few modern European social movements, certainly in Britain, have captured the attention of posterity to quite the extent it has done. Encompassing moments of great drama, it is one of the very rare points in British history where it is legitimate to speculate how close the country came to revolution. It is also pivotal to debates around continuity and change in Victorian Britain, gender, language and identity. Chartism: A New History is the only book to offer in-depth coverage of the entire chronological spread (1838-58) of this pivotal movement and to consider its rich and varied history in full. Based throughout on original research (including newly discovered material) this is a vivid and compelling narrative of a movement which mobilised three million people at its height. The author deftly intertwines analysis and narrative, interspersing his chapters with short 'Chartist Lives', relating the intimate and personal to the realm of the social and political. This book will become essential reading for anyone with an interest in early Victorian Britain, specialists, students and general readers alike.
Family Fortunes by
Family Fortuneshas become a seminal text in class and gender history. Published to wide critical acclaim in 1987, its influence in the field continues to be extensive. It has cast new light on the perception of middle-class society and gender relations between 1780 and 1850. This revised edition contains a substantial new introduction, placing the original survey in its historiographical context. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall evaluate the readings their text has received and broaden their study by taking into account recent developments and shifts in the field. They apply current perceptions of history to their original project, and see new motives and meanings emerge that reinforce their argument.
The Forging of the Modern State by
In this hugely ambitious history of Britain, Eric Evans surveys every aspect of the period in which the country was transformed into the world#65533;s first industrial power. This was an era of revolutionary change unparalleled in Britain, yet one in which transformation was achieved without political revolution. The unique combination of transition and revolution is a major theme in the book, which ranges across the embryonic empire, the Church, education, health, finance, and rural and urban life. Evans gives particular attention to the Great Reform Act of 1832. The Third Edition includes an entirely new introductory chapter, and is illustrated for the first time.
Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class by
Tracing the creation of a distinctive high culture in the industrial cities of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, this study argues for the importance of ritualized modes of social behaviour in understanding the construction of authority in the 19th-century city.
White, Male and Middle Class by
What are the relations between feminism and history, feminist politics and historical practice? What are the connections between gender and class? What part have racial identities and ethnic difference played in the construction of Englishness? Through a series of provocative and richly detailed essays, Catherine Hall explores these questions. She argues that feminism has opened up vital new questions for history and transformed familiar historical narratives. Class can no longer be understood outside of gender, or gender outside of class. But English identities have also been rooted in imperial power. White, Male and Middle Class explores the ways in which middle-class masculinities were rooted in conceptions of power over dependants - whether black or female.
Defining the Victorian Nation by
Defining the Victorian Nation offers a fresh perspective on one of the most significant pieces of legislation in nineteenth-century Britain. Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland and Jane Rendall demonstrate that the Second Reform Act of 1867 was marked not only by extensive controversy about the extension of the vote, but also by new concepts of masculinity and the masculine voter, the beginnings of the movement for women's suffrage, and a parallel debate about the meanings and forms of national belonging. The chapters in this book draw on recent developments in cultural, social and gender history, broadening the study of nineteenth-century British political history and integrating questions of nation and empire. Fascinating illustrations illuminate the argument, and a detailed chronology, biographical notes and selected bibliography offer further support to the student reader. Students and scholars in history, women's studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies will find this book invaluable.
Building Jerusalem: the rise and fall of the Victorian city by 
Crisis of Doubt by
The Victorian crisis of faith has dominated discussions of religion and the Victorians. Stories are frequently told of prominent Victorians such as George Eliot losing their faith. This crisis is presented as demonstrating the intellectual weakness of Christianity as it was assaulted by newlines of thought such as Darwinism and biblical criticism. This study serves as a corrective to that narrative. It focuses on freethinking and Secularist leaders who came to faith. As sceptics, they had imbibed all the latest ideas that seemed to undermine faith; nevertheless, they went on toexperience a crisis of doubt, and then to defend in their writings and lectures the intellectual cogency of Christianity. The Victorian crisis of doubt was surprisingly large. Telling this story serves to restore its true proportion and to reveal the intellectual strength of faith in the nineteenthcentury.
The Fin de Siècle by
In an important contribution to the developing field of interdisciplinary studies in the Humanities, Ledger and Luckhurst make available to students and scholars a large body of non-literary texts which richly configure the variegated cultural history of the fin-de-siecle years. That historyis here shown to inaugurate many enduring critical and cultural concerns, with sections on Degeneration, Outcast London, The Metropolis, The New Woman, Literary Debates, The New Imperialism, Socialism, Anarchism, Scientific Naturalism, Psychology, Psychical Research, Sexology, Anthropology andRacial Science. Each section begins with an Introduction and closes with Editorial Notes which carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.
Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century England by
This work provides an accessible introduction to the culture of English popular politics between 1815 and 1900, the period from Luddism to the New Liberalism. This is an area that has attracted great historical interest and has undergone fundamental revision in the last two decades. Rohan McWilliam brings the debate up to date. He assesses popular ideology in relation to the state, the nation, gender and the nature of party formation, and reveals a much richer social history emerging in the light of recent historiographical developments.
Dangerous Sexualities by
Dangerous Sexualities takes a look at how our ideas of health and disease are linked to moral and immoral notions of sex. Beginning in the 1830s, Frank Mort relates his social historical narratives to the sexual choices and possibilities facing us now. This long-awaited second edition has been thoroughly updated to include new discussions of eugenics, race hygiene and social imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With a new and extended bibliography, introduction and illustrations, this second edition brings a classic into the 21st Century.
Conflict and Crisis in the Religious Life of Late Victorian England by
Contrary to its popular image as dull and stodgy, the Victorian period was one of revolutionary change. In its politics, its art, its economic aff airs, its class relationships, and in its religion, change was constant. A half-century after Queen Victoria's death, it was said that she was born in one world and died in another. Th e most interesting and valuable studies of the period take the long view, as does Schlossberg, in his fascinating analysis of religious life in this period. For the Victorians, religion was not cordoned off from the push and shove of real life. Th e early evangelicals got off to a shaky start, beset by hostility, but the movement spread within the churches despite the suspicion in which it was held. Evangelicals, frequently called Puritans by those who opposed them, called for fundamental reforms in both the Church and the society; a social ethic was part of their program of religious renewal. Th eir moral sense explains the social activism of both Church of England Evangelicals and Dissenters, including the half-century crusade for the abolition of slavery. Schlossberg shows how religion in England dealt with such issues as science and the eff ect of German scholarship on religious thinking. Church history cannot simply be explained by its response to external forces as much as by the internal responses to those challenges. Th e nature of the religious enterprise itself, its theologians, clergy, lay people--like all people and all institutions--all responded with alternatives. Schlossberg helps us understand the Victorian period, as well as the increasing secularity of English life today.
Sexual anarchy: gender and culture at the 'fin de siecle' by 
Victorian Values by
In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about Victorian values. This collection of papers attempts to sift through the myths to illustrate how the reality of the Victorian age differs from modern perceptions. Of particular relevance is Raphael Samuel's important examinationof Mrs Thatcher's use of the concept, while other papers shed light on Victorian issues, from the Scotland of Samuel Smiles to the position of women.
The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950 by
Whilst in certain quarters it may be fashionable to suppose that there is no such thing as society historians have had no difficulty in finding their subject. The difficulty, rather, is that the advance has occurred through such an outpouring of research and writing that it is hard for anyone but the specialist to keep up with the literature or grasp the overall picture. In these three volumes, as is the tradition in Cambridge Histories, a team of specialists has assembled the jigsaw of recent monographic research and presented an interpretation of the development of modern British society since 1750, from three complementary perspectives: those of regional communities, of the working and living environment, and of social institutions. Each volume is self-contained, and each contribution, thematically defined, contains its own chronology of the period under review. Taken as a whole they offer an authoritative and comprehensive view of the manner and method of the shaping of society in the two centuries of unprecedented demographic and economic change.
The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950 by
Whilst in certain quarters it may be fashionable to suppose that there is no such thing as society historians, they have had no difficulty in finding their subject. The difficulty, rather, is that an outpouring of research and writing is hard for anyone but the specialist to keep up with the literature or grasp the overall picture. In these three volumes, as is the tradition in Cambridge Histories, a team of specialists has assembled the jigsaw of topical monographic research and presented an interpretation of the development of modern British society since 1750, from three perspectives: those of regional communities, the working and living environment, and social institutions. Each volume is self-contained, and each contribution, thematically defined, contains its own chronology of the period under review. Taken as a whole they offer an authoritative and comprehensive view of the manner and method of the shaping of society in the two centuries of unprecedented demographic and economic change.
The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950 by
Whilst in certain quarters it may be fashionable to suppose that there is no such thing as society historians, they have had no difficulty in finding their subject. The difficulty, rather, is that an outpouring of research and writing is hard for anyone but the specialist to keep up with the literature or grasp the overall picture. In these three volumes, as is the tradition in Cambridge Histories, a team of specialists has assembled the jigsaw of topical monographic research and presented an interpretation of the development of modern British society since 1750, from three perspectives: those of regional communities, the working and living environment, and social institutions. Each volume is self-contained, and each contribution, thematically defined, contains its own chronology of the period under review. Taken as a whole they offer an authoritative and comprehensive view of the manner and method of the shaping of society in the two centuries of unprecedented demographic and economic change.
Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain by
In the space of barely fifteen years, the history of masculinity has become an important dimension of social and cultural history. John Tosh has been in the forefront of the field since the beginning, having written A Man#65533;s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (1999), and co-edited Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (1991). Here he brings together nine key articles which he has written over the past ten years. These pieces document the aspirations of the first contributors to the field, and the development of an agenda of key historical issues which have become central to our conceptualising of gender in history. Later essays take up the issue of periodisation and the relationship of masculinity to other historical identities and structures, particularly in the context of the family. The last two essays, published for the first time, approach British imperial history in a fresh way. They argue that the empire needs to be seen as a specifically male enterprise, answering to masculine aspirations and insecurities. This leads to illuminating insights into the nature of colonial emigration and the popular investment in empire during the era the New Imperialism. Related Titles The Making of Modern Woman/Abrams/0582414105/2002 Gender and the Historian/Alberti/0582404630/2002 Family Matters/Peplar/0582418704/2002
City of dreadful delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London by 
Reconstructing the Criminal by
This ambitious and imaginative work interprets criminal justice history by relating it to intellectual and cultural history. Starting from the assumption that policies and statutes originate in a society's values and norms, the author skilfully and persuasively demonstrates how changes in criminal law and penal practice were related to the changing values of early, mid, and late Victorian and Edwardian society. Wiener traces changes in the criminal justice system by examining the treatment of offenders. During the Victorian period the system became more punitive and was then reformed in line with welfarist thinking. Wiener's wide-ranging discussion of issues, most notably of free will versus determinism, sheds light on a broad range of Victorian history, beyond crime and punishment.
Liberty's Dawn by
This remarkable book looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class. The Industrial Revolution brought not simply misery and poverty. On the contrary, Griffin shows how it raised incomes, improved literacy, and offered exciting opportunities for political action. For many, this was a period of new, and much valued, sexual and cultural freedom. This rich personal account focuses on the social impact of the Industrial Revolution, rather than its economic and political histories. In the tradition of best-selling books by Liza Picard, Judith Flanders, and Jerry White, Griffin gets under the skin of the period and creates a cast of colorful characters, including factory workers, miners, shoemakers, carpenters, servants, and farm laborers.
About Faces by
When nineteenth-century Londoners looked at each other, what did they see, and how did they want to be seen? Sharrona Pearl reveals the way that physiognomy, the study of facial features and their relationship to character, shaped the way that people understood one another and presented themselves. Physiognomy was initially a practice used to get information about others, but soon became a way to self-consciously give information--on stage, in print, in images, in research, and especially on the street. Moving through a wide range of media, Pearl shows how physiognomical notions rested on instinct and honed a kind of shared subjectivity. She looks at the stakes for framing physiognomy--a practice with a long history--as a science in the nineteenth century. By showing how physiognomy gave people permission to judge others, Pearl holds up a mirror both to Victorian times and our own.
Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation by
Beginning with Victoria's enthronement and an exploration of sensationalist accounts of attacks on the Queen, and ending with the notorious case of a fin-de-siècle killer, Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation throws new light on nineteenth-century attitudes toward crime and 'deviance'. The essays, which draw on both canonical and liminal texts, examine the Victorian fascination with criminal psychology and pathology, engaging with real life cases alongside fictional accounts by writers as diverse as Ainsworth, Stevenson, and Stoker. Among the topics are shifting definitions of criminality and the ways in which discourses surrounding crime changed during the nineteenth century, the literal and social criminalization of particular sex acts, and the gendering of degeneration and insanity. As fascinated as they were with criminality, the Victorians were equally concerned with solving crime, and this collection also focuses on the forces of law enforcement and nineteenth-century attempts to "read" the criminal body as revealed in Victorian crime fiction and reportage. Contributors engage with the detective figure and his growing professionalization, while examining the role of science and technology - both at home and in the Empire - in solving cases.
Conflict and Crisis in the Religious Life of Late Victorian England by
Contrary to its popular image as dull and stodgy, the Victorian period was one of revolutionary change. In its politics, its art, its economic aff airs, its class relationships, and in its religion, change was constant. A half-century after Queen Victoria's death, it was said that she was born in one world and died in another. Th e most interesting and valuable studies of the period take the long view, as does Schlossberg, in his fascinating analysis of religious life in this period. For the Victorians, religion was not cordoned off from the push and shove of real life. Th e early evangelicals got off to a shaky start, beset by hostility, but the movement spread within the churches despite the suspicion in which it was held. Evangelicals, frequently called Puritans by those who opposed them, called for fundamental reforms in both the Church and the society; a social ethic was part of their program of religious renewal. Th eir moral sense explains the social activism of both Church of England Evangelicals and Dissenters, including the half-century crusade for the abolition of slavery. Schlossberg shows how religion in England dealt with such issues as science and the eff ect of German scholarship on religious thinking. Church history cannot simply be explained by its response to external forces as much as by the internal responses to those challenges. Th e nature of the religious enterprise itself, its theologians, clergy, lay people--like all people and all institutions--all responded with alternatives. Schlossberg helps us understand the Victorian period, as well as the increasing secularity of English life today.
The Prostitute's Body by 
Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth-Century England by 
Crime and Society in England by
"A thoroughly learned, clear-eyed and engaging read." Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times, on The Great British Bobby (2009) "Crime is one aspect of the world that seems to get inexorably worse as you get older....But how do the teenagers outside your local corner shop really compare with those in times past? Go to Crime and Society in England: 1750-1900 by Clive Emsley; you might even take a copy to the corner shop and instigate an edifying debate." David Mattin, The Times "This is an outstanding work [...] written by one of the most respected and authoritative historians in the field." Dr Louise Jackson, Edinburgh University Acknowledged as one of the best introductions to the history of crime in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Crime and Society in England 1750-1900 examines the developments in policing, the courts, and the penal system as England became increasingly industrialised and urbanised. The book challenges the old but still influential idea that crime can be attributed to the behaviour of a criminal class and that changes in the criminal justice system were principally the work of far-sighted, humanitarian reformers. In this fourth edition of his now classic account, Professor Emsley draws on new research that has shifted the focus from class to gender, from property crime to violent crime and towards media constructions of offenders, while still maintaining a balance with influential early work in the area. Wide-ranging and accessible, the new edition examines: · the value of criminal statistics · the effect that contemporary ideas about class and gender had on perceptions of criminality · changes in the patterns of crime · developments in policing and the spread of summary punishment · the increasing formality of the courts · the growth of the prison as the principal form of punishment and debates about the decline in corporal and capital punishments Thoroughly updated throughout, the fourth edition also includes, for the first time, illuminating contemporary illustrations.
Crime, Protest, Community, and Police in Nineteenth Century Britain by 
Crime and Poverty in 19th-Century England by
It has long been suggested that poverty was responsible for a criminal underclass emerging in Britain during the nineteenth century. Until quite recently, historians did little to challenge this perception. Using innovative quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques, this book looks in detail at some of the causal factors that motivated the poorer classes to commit crime, or act in ways that transgressed acceptable standards of behaviour. It demonstrates how the strategies that these individuals employed varied between urban and rural environments, and shows how the poor railed against legislative reforms that threatened the solvency of their households. In the process, this book provides the first solid appreciation of the complex relationship between crime and poverty in two distinct socio-economic regions between 1830 and 1885.
London in the Nineteenth Century by
Jerry White's London in the Nineteenth Century is the richest and most absorbing account of the city's greatest century by its leading expert. London in the nineteenth century was the greatest city mankind had ever seen. Its growth was stupendous. Its wealth was dazzling. Its horrors shocked the world. This was the London of Blake, Thackeray and Mayhew, of Nash, Faraday and Disraeli. Most of all it was the London of Dickens. As William Blake put it, London was "a Human awful wonder of God." In Jerry White's dazzling history we witness the city's unparalleled metamorphosis over the course of the century through the daily lives of its inhabitants. We see how Londoners worked, played, and adapted to the demands of the metropolis during this century of dizzying change. The result is a panorama teeming with life.
Nineteenth-Century Britain by
First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable politicalstability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperialzenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'.
Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the Census. (Print copy) by
Vanishing for the vote recounts what happened on one night, Sunday 2 April, 1911, when the Liberal government demanded every household comply with its census requirements. Suffragette organisations urged women, all still voteless, to boycott this census. Many did. Some wrote 'Votes for Women' boldly across their schedules. Others hid in darkened houses or, in the case of Emily Wilding Davison, in a cupboard within the Houses of Parliament. Yet many did not. Even some suffragettes who might be expected to boycott decided to comply - and completed a perfectly accurate schedule. Why? Vanishing for the vote explores the 'battle for the census' arguments that raged across Edwardian England in spring 1911. It investigates why some committed campaigners decided against civil disobedience tactics, instead opting to provide the government with accurate data for its health and welfare reforms. This book plunges the reader into the turbulent world of Edwardian politics, so vividly recorded on census night 1911. Based on a wealth of brand-new documentary evidence, it offers compelling reading for history scholars and general readers alike. Sumptuously produced, with 50 illustrations and an invaluable Gazetteer of suffrage campaigners.
Pauper Policies: Poor Law Practices in England 1780 - 1850 (Print copy) by
Pauper policies examines how policies under the old and New Poor Laws were conceived, adopted, implemented, developed or abandoned. This fresh perspective reveals significant aspects of poor law history which have been overlooked by scholars. Important new research is presented on the adoption and implementation of 'enabling acts' at the end of the old poor laws; the exchange of knowledge about how best to provide poor relief in the final decades of the old poor law and formative decades of the New; and the impact of national scandals on policy-making in the new Victorian system. Pointing towards a new direction in the study of poor law administration, it examines how people, both those in positions of power and the poor, could shape pauper policies. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in welfare and poverty in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England.
Manliness in Britain, 1760-1900. (Print copy) by
This book offers an innovative account of manliness in Britain between 1760 and 1900. Using diverse textual, visual and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men's bodies -often working-class ones - and the emotions and material culture associated with them. The book analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors and blacksmiths, brave firemen and noble industrial workers. It also investigates unmanly men, such as drunkards, wife-beaters and masturbators, who elicited disgust and aversion. Unusually, Manliness in Britain runs from the eras of feeling, revolution and reform to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy and mass media, periods often dealt with separately by historians of masculinities. It therefore disrupts the received picture and chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities with an account of manliness that is more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class and less heteronormative than other studies.
The Rural War: Captain Swing and the politics of protest. (Print copy) by
Beginning in Kent in the summer of 1830 before spreading throughout the country, the Swing Riots were the most dramatic and widespread rising of the English rural poor. Seeking an end to their immiseration, the protestors destroyed machines, demanded higher wages and more generous poor relief, and even frequently resorted to incendiarism to enforce their modest demands. Occurring against a backdrop of revolutions in continental Europe and a political crisis, Swing to many represented a genuine challenge to the existing ruling order, provoking a bitter and bloody repression.Now available in paperback for the first time, this study offers a vivid account of this defining moment in British history. It is shown that the protests were more organised, intensive and politically motivated than has hitherto been thought, representing complex statements about the nature of authority, gender and the politics of rural life. This book will become essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of the English countryside: specialists, students and general readers alike.
