After the Victorians

After the Victorians PDF Author: A. N. Wilson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466893702
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
The distinguished historian A.N. Wilson has charted, in vivid detail, Britain's rise to world dominance, a tale of how one small island nation came to be the mightiest, richest country on earth, reigning over much of the globe. Now in his much anticipated sequel to the classic The Victorians, he describes how in little more than a generation Britain's power and influence in the world would virtually dissolve. In After the Victorians, Wilson presents a panoramic view of an era, stretching from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the dawn of the cold war in the early 1950s. He offers riveting accounts of the savagery of World War I and the world-altering upheaval of the Communist Revolution. He explains Britain's role in shaping the destiny of the Middle East. And he casts a bright new light on the World War II years: Britain played a central role in defeating Germany but at a severe cost. The nation would emerge from the war bankrupt and fatally weakened, sidelined from world politics, while America would assume the mantle of dominant world power, facing off against the Soviet Union in the cold war. Wilson's perspective is not confined to the trenches of the battlefield and the halls of parliament: he also examines the parallel story of the beginnings of Modernism-he visits the novelists, philosophers, poets, and painters to see what they reveal about the activities of the politicians, scientists, and generals. Blending military, political, social, and cultural history of the most dramatic kind, A.N. Wilson offers an absorbing portrait of the decline of one of the world's great powers. The result is a fresh account of the birth pangs of the modern world, as well as a timely analysis of imperialism and its discontents.

After the Victorians

After the Victorians PDF Author: A. N. Wilson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466893702
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 624

Get Book

Book Description
The distinguished historian A.N. Wilson has charted, in vivid detail, Britain's rise to world dominance, a tale of how one small island nation came to be the mightiest, richest country on earth, reigning over much of the globe. Now in his much anticipated sequel to the classic The Victorians, he describes how in little more than a generation Britain's power and influence in the world would virtually dissolve. In After the Victorians, Wilson presents a panoramic view of an era, stretching from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the dawn of the cold war in the early 1950s. He offers riveting accounts of the savagery of World War I and the world-altering upheaval of the Communist Revolution. He explains Britain's role in shaping the destiny of the Middle East. And he casts a bright new light on the World War II years: Britain played a central role in defeating Germany but at a severe cost. The nation would emerge from the war bankrupt and fatally weakened, sidelined from world politics, while America would assume the mantle of dominant world power, facing off against the Soviet Union in the cold war. Wilson's perspective is not confined to the trenches of the battlefield and the halls of parliament: he also examines the parallel story of the beginnings of Modernism-he visits the novelists, philosophers, poets, and painters to see what they reveal about the activities of the politicians, scientists, and generals. Blending military, political, social, and cultural history of the most dramatic kind, A.N. Wilson offers an absorbing portrait of the decline of one of the world's great powers. The result is a fresh account of the birth pangs of the modern world, as well as a timely analysis of imperialism and its discontents.

The Victorians

The Victorians PDF Author: A. N. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393049749
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 778

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Book Description
Wilson singles out those whose lives illuminate the 19th century--Darwin, Marx, Gladstone, Kipling, and others--and explains through these signature lives how Victorian England started a revolution that still hasn't ended. of illustrations.

After the Victorians

After the Victorians PDF Author: Susan Pedersen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134911793
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Chapter Introduction -- chapter 1 Henrietta Barnett 1851-1936 -- chapter 2 George Alfred Lefroy 1854-1919 -- chapter 3 Raymond Unwin 1863-1940 -- chapter 4 Eleanor Rathbone 1872-1946 -- chapter 5E.M. Forster 1879-1970 -- chapter 6 Leonard Woolf 1880-1969 -- chapter 7J.M. Keynes 1883-1946 -- chapter 8 John Reith 1889-1971 -- chapter 9J.B. Priestley 1894-1984 -- chapter 10 John Summerson 1904-1992 -- chapter 11 John Clive 1924-1990.

Victorians Undone

Victorians Undone PDF Author: Kathryn Hughes
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142142570X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
In lively, accessible prose, Victorians Undone fills the space where the body ought to be, proposing new ways of thinking and writing about flesh in the nineteenth century.

Inventing the Victorians

Inventing the Victorians PDF Author: Matthew Sweet
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466872713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
"Suppose that everything we think we know about the Victorians is wrong." So begins Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet, a compact and mind-bending whirlwind tour through the soul of the nineteenth century, and a round debunking of our assumptions about it. The Victorians have been victims of the "the enormous condescension of posterity," in the historian E. P. Thompson's phrase. Locked in the drawing room, theirs was an age when, supposedly, existence was stultifying, dank, and over-furnished, and when behavior conformed so rigorously to proprieties that the repressed results put Freud into business. We think we have the Victorians pegged--as self-righteous, imperialist, racist, materialist, hypocritical and, worst of all, earnest. Oh how wrong we are, argues Matthew Sweet in this highly entertaining, provocative, and illuminating look at our great, and great-great, grandparents. One hundred years after Queen Victoria's death, Sweet forces us to think again about her century, entombed in our minds by Dickens, the Elephant Man, Sweeney Todd, and by images of unfettered capitalism and grinding poverty. Sweet believes not only that we're wrong about the Victorians but profoundly indebted to them. In ways we have been slow to acknowledge, their age and our own remain closely intertwined. The Victorians invented the theme park, the shopping mall, the movies, the penny arcade, the roller coaster, the crime novel, and the sensational newspaper story. Sweet also argues that our twenty-first century smugness about how far we have evolved is misplaced. The Victorians were less racist than we are, less religious, less violent, and less intolerant. Far from being an outcast, Oscar Wilde was a fairly typical Victorian man; the love that dared not speak its name was declared itself fairly openly. In 1868 the first international cricket match was played between an English team and an Australian team composed entirely of aborigines. The Victorians loved sensation, novelty, scandal, weekend getaways, and the latest conveniences (by 1869, there were image-capable telegraphs; in 1873 a store had a machine that dispensed milk to after-hours' shoppers). Does all this sound familiar? As Sweet proves in this fascinating, eye-opening book, the reflection we find in the mirror of the nineteenth century is our own. We inhabit buildings built by the Victorians; some of us use their sewer system and ride on the railways they built. We dismiss them because they are the age against whom we have defined our own. In brilliant style, Inventing the Victorians shows how much we have been missing.

Understanding the Victorians

Understanding the Victorians PDF Author: Susie Steinbach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041577408X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
"Understanding the Victorians paints a vivid portrait of the era, combining broad surveys with close analysis, and introduces students to the critical debates taking place among historians today. Focusing not just on England but on the whole of Great Britain and Ireland it emphasises class, gender, and racial and imperial positioning as constitutive of human relations. This book encompasses the whole of the Victorian period giving equal prominence to social and cultural topics alongside the politics and economics. Starting with the Queen Caroline Affair in 1820 and coming right up to the start of World War I in 1914, Susie L. Steinbach uses thematic chapters to discuss and evaluate, the economy, gender, religion, the history of science and ideas, material culture and sexuality. Steinbach also provides much-needed chapters on consumption, which links consumption with production, on law, which explains the legal culture and trials of criminal and scandalous cases and on space which draws to together the most current research in Victorian studies"--Provided by publisher.

Understanding the Victorians

Understanding the Victorians PDF Author: Susie L. Steinbach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134818254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
Understanding the Victorians paints a vivid portrait of this era of dramatic change, combining broad survey with close analysis and introducing students to the critical debates taking place among historians today. Encompassing all of Great Britain and Ireland over the whole of the Victorian period, it gives prominence to social and cultural topics alongside politics and economics and emphasises class, gender, and racial and imperial positioning as constitutive of human relations. This second edition is fully updated throughout, containing a new chapter on leisure in the Victorian period, the most recent historiographical research in Victorian Studies, and enhanced coverage of imperialism and working-class life. Starting with the Queen Caroline Affair in 1820 and coming up to the start of World War I in 1914, Susie L. Steinbach uses thematic chapters to discuss and evaluate topics such as politics, imperialism, the economy, class, gender, the monarchy, arts and entertainment, religion, sexuality, religion, and science. There are also three chapters on space, consumption, and the law, topics rarely covered at this introductory level. With a clear introduction outlining the key themes of the period, a detailed timeline, and suggestions for further reading and relevant internet resources, this is the ideal companion for all students of the nineteenth century.

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain PDF Author: Leah Price
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400842182
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.

After The Victorians

After The Victorians PDF Author: A.N. Wilson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446493008
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
When this book begins, in the reign of Edward VII, Great Britain commands the mightiest empire the world has ever seen. By the time it ends, with the Coronation of Elizabeth II, Britain has emerged victorious from a world war, but ruined as a world power. How did Britain's power and influence decline? This is one of the questions which A. N. Wilson seeks to answer in his masterly follow-up to The Victorians.

Annoying the Victorians

Annoying the Victorians PDF Author: James Kincaid
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317971183
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
What happens when bad criticism happens to good people? Annoying the Victorians sets the tradition of critical discourse and literary criticism on its ear, as well as a few other areas. James Kincaid brings his witty, erudite and thoroughly cynical self to the Victorians, and they will never read (or be read) quite the same.