The Victorians

The Victorians PDF Author: John Gardiner
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852855604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
A major study of changing attitudes to the Victorians, from Lytton Strachey to the present day. >

The Victorians

The Victorians PDF Author: John Gardiner
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852855604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
A major study of changing attitudes to the Victorians, from Lytton Strachey to the present day. >

Inventing the Victorians

Inventing the Victorians PDF Author: Matthew Sweet
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466872713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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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.

The Victorian World Picture

The Victorian World Picture PDF Author: David Newsome
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813527581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
David Newsome's monumental history, The Victorian World Picture, takes a good, long look at the Victorian age and what distinguishes it so prominently in the history of both England and the world. The Victorian World Picture presents a vivid canvas of the Victorians as they saw themselves and as the rest of the world saw them.

The Making of a Tory Evangelical

The Making of a Tory Evangelical PDF Author: David Furse-Roberts
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532654294
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
As one of Victorian Britain’s pre-eminent social reformers, Lord Shaftesbury (1801–85) exerted a lasting impact surpassing all of his parliamentary contemporaries. Despite being born into one of England’s aristocratic families, a combination of early childhood deprivation, an earnest Evangelical faith, and an abiding sense of noblesse oblige made him a champion of the poor. His seminal contribution to the Victorian factory reform movement represented just one of his manifold legacies. This contextual study of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury probes the mind behind the man to evaluate the religious and philosophical ideas, and their leading figures, that ignited his lifelong activism in the public sphere. This book reveals that far from representing a relic of the Victorian age, the Earl of Shaftesbury, whilst a conservative by predilection, was essentially a forward-looking and farsighted reformer. The principles that Shaftesbury espoused of industrial justice, class harmony, subsidiarity, volunteerism, selfless individualism, religious observance, strong families and private enterprise tempered by moderate state intervention are essentially those prized by liberal democracies today as the foundation for social cohesion, prosperity, and human flourishing.

Lives of Victorian Political Figures, Part I

Lives of Victorian Political Figures, Part I PDF Author: Michael Partridge
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000420159
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1888

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Book Description
Aims to bring alive, through the eyes of their contemporaries, three of the greatest political figures of the Victorian era - Henry, third Viscount Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. This four-volume set draws together various documents including journals and diaries, pamphlets, correspondence, and other ephemeral literature.

A Companion to Literary Biography

A Companion to Literary Biography PDF Author: Richard Bradford
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118896289
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description
An authoritative review of literary biography covering the seventeenth century to the twentieth century A Companion to Literary Biography offers a comprehensive account of literary biography spanning the history of the genre across three centuries. The editor – an esteemed literary biographer and noted expert in the field – has encouraged contributors to explore the theoretical and methodological questions raised by the writing of biographies of writers. The text examines how biographers have dealt with the lives of classic authors from Chaucer to contemporary figures such as Kingsley Amis. The Companion brings a new perspective on how literary biography enables the reader to deal with the relationship between the writer and their work. Literary biography is the most popular form of writing about writing, yet it has been largely neglected in the academic community. This volume bridges the gap between literary biography as a popular genre and its relevance for the academic study of literature. This important work: Allows the author of a biography to be treated as part of the process of interpretation and investigates biographical reading as an important aspect of criticism Examines the birth of literary biography at the close of the seventeenth century and considers its expansion through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries Addresses the status and writing of literary biography from numerous perspectives and with regard to various sources, methodologies and theories Reviews the ways in which literary biography has played a role in our perception of writers in the mainstream of the English canon from Chaucer to the present day Written for students at the undergraduate level, through postgraduate and doctoral levels, as well as academics, A Companion to Literary Biography illustrates and accounts for the importance of the literary biography as a vital element of criticism and as an index to our perception of literary history.

Lives of Victorian Political Figures, Part I, Volume 2

Lives of Victorian Political Figures, Part I, Volume 2 PDF Author: Nancy LoPatin-Lummis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000419932
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Aims to bring alive, through the eyes of their contemporaries, three of the greatest political figures of the Victorian era - Henry, third Viscount Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. This four-volume set draws together various documents including journals and diaries, pamphlets, correspondence, and other ephemeral literature. Volume 2 covers the political life of Benjamin Disraeli (Part I).

The Story of English

The Story of English PDF Author: Philip Gooden
Publisher: Quercus
ISBN: 1623653045
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Born as a Germanic tongue with the arrival in Britain of the Anglo-Saxons in the early medieval period, heavily influenced by Norman French from the 11th century, and finally emerging as modern English from the late Middle Ages, the English language has grown to become the linguistic equivalent of a superpower, and is now sometimes described as the world's lingua franca. Worldwide, some 380 million people speak English as a first language and some 600 million as a second language. A staggering one billion people are believed to be learning it. English is the premier international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, and diplomacy and also on the Internet. It has been one of the official languages of the United Nations since its founding in 1945. It is considered by many good judges to be well on the way to becoming the world's first universal language Author Philip Gooden tells the story of the English language in all its richness and variety. From the intriguing origins and changing definitions of common words such as OK, berserk, curfew, cabal, and pow-wow, to the massive transformations wrought in the vocabulary and structure of the language by Anglo-Saxon and Norman conquest, through to the literary triumphs of Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales and the works of Shakespeare. The Story of English is a fascinating tale of linguistic, social and cultural transformation, and one that is accessibly and authoritatively told by an author in perfect command of his material.

Selected Essays

Selected Essays PDF Author: Virginia Woolf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199556067
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
'A good essay must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.' According to Virginia Woolf, the goal of the essay 'is simply that it should give pleasure...It should lay us under a spell with its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last.' One of the best practitioners of the art she analysed so rewardingly, Woolf displayed her essay-writing skills across a wide range of subjects, with all the craftsmanship, substance, and rich allure of her novels. This selection brings together thirty of her best essays, including the famous 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', a clarion call for modern fiction. She discusses the arts of writing and of reading, and the particular role and reputation of women writers. She writes movingly about her father and the art of biography, and of the London scene in the early decades of the twentieth century. Overall, these pieces are as indispensable to an understanding of this great writer as they are enchanting in their own right. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez PDF Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438114141
Category : Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Since its publication in 1967, One Hundred Years of Solitude has sold well over 10 million copies and earned its author, Gabriel GarcÍa MÁrquez, a host of awards-including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. The novel has brought about co