The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life - Softcover

Lubenow, W

Softcover

ISBN 10: 052103728X ISBN 13: 9780521037280

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Synopsis

This book offers a highly engaging history of the world's most famous secret society, the Cambridge 'Apostles', based upon the lives, careers and correspondence of the 255 Apostles elected to the Cambridge Conversazione Society between 1820 and 1914. It examines the way in which the Apostles recruited their membership, the Society's discussions and its intellectual preoccupations. From its pages emerge such figures as F. D. Maurice, John Sterling, John Mitchell Kemble, Richard Trench, Fenton Hort, James Clerk Maxwell, Henry Sidgwick, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes. The careers of these and many other leading Apostles are traced, through parliament, government, letters, and in public school and university reform. The book also makes an important contribution in discussing the role of liberalism, imagination and friendship at the intersection of the life of learning and public life. This is a major contribution to the intellectual and social history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to the history of the University of Cambridge. It demonstrates in impressive depth just how and why the Apostles forged original themes in modern intellectual life.

About this title

Review

'This is a scholarly book, deep and learned, tightly focused but not without consideration of the wider context in which it sits.' Cambridge

Book Description

This is a full-scale study of the world's most famous secret society, the Cambridge 'Apostles', whose select membership included such figures as F. D. Maurice, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes and E. M. Forster. The book also examines more generally the role of liberalism, imagination and friendship in modern life.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 052103728X
• ISBN 13: 9780521037280
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 476