The Victorians - Hardcover

Wilson, A N

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393049744 ISBN 13: 9780393049749

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004

Synopsis

The Nineteenth Century saw greater changes than any previous era: in the ways nations and societies were organized; in scientific knowledge; in nonreligious intellectual development; and in capital and its consequences. The crucial players in this drama were the British, who invented both capitalism and imperialism and were incomparably the richest, hence the most important, investors in the developing world. In this sense, England's position has strong resemblances to America's in the late twentieth century.As one of our most accomplished biographers and novelists, A. N. Wilson has a keen eye for a good story, and in these pages he singles out those writers, statesmen, scientists, philosophers, and soldiers whose lives illuminate so grand and revolutionary a history: Darwin, Marx, Gladstone, Christina Rossetti, Gordon, Cardinal Newman, George Eliot, Kipling. Wilson's accomplishment in this book is to explain through these signature lives how Victorian England started a revolution that still hasn't ended.

About this title

Review:

AN Wilson’s The Victorians is the longest and liveliest of the books which have appeared in the wake of the centenary of Victoria’s death. As one might expect, Wilson, Evening Standard columnist, novelist, and polemical biographer, has an eye for colourful detail, cannot resist gossip about the great and good, and smells out cant and hypocrisy at 10 paces. Familiar tales are told about the sexual proclivities, religious hypocrisies and gargantuan economic and imperial appetites of the Victorians. But the book is more than an exercise in debunking. Wilson sees 19th century Britons as the harbingers of modernity: the first society to grapple with and agonise over the Darwinian struggle of social mobility and industrial growth. He documents in detail the relentless drive for getting on, sympathises with its victims--in the English towns, the Irish bogs and on the Indian plains – and warms to the critical commentary of the chief sages and seers of the era: Carlyle, Dickens, and Manning. The intellectual set-pieces of the time--the Gothic revival, religion versus science, Anglo-Catholicism--are particularly well-handled.

As well as being its strengths, the author’s prejudices are at times the book’s weaknesses. Apart from Victoria’s Prime Ministers and the Irish nationalist leader, Parnell, Wilson doesn’t much like the politicians of the period (or the political economists), and these aspects of Victorian history get rather short shrift. And the narrative occasionally jumps and jars as he tries to include everything and anything (Dostoyevsky and Wagner wander in at one stage). But there is much to amuse and instruct throughout, and, just as important, not a little to argue with as well.--Miles Taylor

Review:

"The Victorians finds Wilson writing at the height of his powers."

Wilson's panoramic survey is the best attempt so far to describe and explain what was happening in that fascinating time. "

The Victorians finds Wilson writing at the height of his powers. "

A vivid portrait of Victorian Britain and Britons...the kind of book that turns people on to history.

The Victorians finds Wilson writing at the height of his powers.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0393049744
• ISBN 13: 9780393049749
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 544