List of Plates
List of Maps
List of Tables
Acknowledgements to Illustrations
Introduction
PART 1: SOCIETY AND THE STATE
1: The Agrarian Interest: Agricultural ups and downs - Rural
society
2: The Middle Sort of People: Numbers, experiences, anxieties -
Professional persons - Lower borderlands - Urban contexts
3: Workers by Hand: Numbers, work, poverty - Respectability,
adjustment, autonomy - Standards of living
4: The Nature of the State: What should the State do? - Centre and
localities - What the State did
PART II: THE FABRIC OF POLITICS
5: Parties, Government, Policies 1846-1855: Corn Law repeal -
Parties - Governments - Imperial and foreign affairs
6: Crimean War and Indian Mutiny: War against Russia - Revolt in
India
7: Palmerston and After, 1855-1868: Palmerston at last -
Conservative interlude - Palmerston again and Gladstone rising -
Perturbations, 1865-1868 - Imperial and foreign affairs
8: Reform and Electoral Politics: Questions of reform - Reform Acts
1867/1868 - Elections and the electoral system
PART III MONEY AND MENTALITIES
9: A Maturing Economy: Revolutions, climaterics, productivity -
Industries, railways services - A trading nation - Investing at
home and overseas - No longer at full steam?
10: Living and Spending: Families, sex, relationships - Houses,
domesticity, making ends meet - Food and clothes - Shops, pubs, and
having a good time
11: The Business of Culture: Preliminary - Literature - Music -
Painting - Architecture
12: Godly People: Denominational landscapes - Who they were and
what they did
13: The Evolutionary Moment: Spencer, Darwin, and others -
Progress, dissolution, hopes, fears - Matters of belief - matters
of imagination
PART IV ENGLAND AND BEYOND
14: A British Nation? The Experiences of Scotland and Wales:
Britain, a lop-sided affair - Scotland: society and religion -
Wales: religion and change - Scotland: Identities, regions, land -
Wales: land and politics - Ambivalent states
15: The Island of Ireland: Contexts - The Great Famine - A
post-famine world: land, religion, politics
16: Gladstone and Disraeli 1868-1880: Gladstone sprinting -
Disraeli strolling - Foreign and imperial affairs - Another Liberal
tide
17: Shifts and Realignments: Leaders, parties, policies - Foreign
and imperial affairs - Irish questions
Maps
Chronology
List of Cabinets
Bibliography
Index
Theodore K. Hoppen is Professor in History at the University of Hull.
`Theodore Hoppen's book will define our views of mid-Victorian
society for the next two or three generations, and well it should.
It is a book written from deep knowledge, wide reading and
sparkling historical vision; students and scholars will gain much
from reading it.'
D. G. Paz, An American Journal - Quarterly Journal devoted to
British Studies
`Hoppen's splendid volume in the New Oxford History of England
series surpasses in organisation, interpretation, and breadth of
treatment its predecessors.'
D.G. Paz, An American Journal - Quarterly Journal devoted to
British Studies
`The final judgement after 700 pages has to be one of admiration
and commendation for Hoppen's magnificent achievement - his
handling of the vast literature, his polymathic grasp of an
extremely diverse subject matter, and his exceptionally readable
prose...he has produced a worthy successor to Woodward and Ensor
that will have its place among those authoritative texts on
Victorian Britain to which students first turn for guidance.'
David Nicholls, Victorian Studies
Hoppen's splendid volume in the New Oxford History of England
series surpasses in organization, interpretation, and breadth of
treatment its predecessors...Theodore Hoppen's book will define our
views of mid-Victorian society for the next two or three
generations, and well it should. It is a book written from deep
knowledge, wide reading, and sparkling historical vision; students
and scholars will gain much from reading it. D G Paz, University of
North
Texas
[A]...magnificent achievement - his [Hoppen's] handling of the vast
literature, his polymathic grasp of an extremely diverse subject
matter, and his exceptionally readable prose...[have] produced a
worthy successor to Woodward and Enson that will have its place
among those authoritative texts on Victorian Britain to which
students first turn for guidance. David Nicholls, Victorian
Studies
`This stimulating and comprehensive volume provides eloquent
justification for the study of modern British history. It should
remain an invaluable source of knowledge for today's political
class which seems strangely contemptuous and ignorant of this
country's past.'
Robert Taylor, Spectator
`[An] impressive study of mid-Victorian Britain.'
Asa Briggs, THES
`It is a measure of Hoppen's achievement that he manages to convey
this rich and nuanced picture of Britain between 1846 and 1886 with
prodigious learning and total conviction, but without ever losing
control or being overwhelmed by his own erudition...a magnificant
work.'
David Cannadine, New Statesman
`An account marked by an acute judiciousness and, as always,
enviable scholarship.'
Michael Bentley, TLS
`[A] welcome development in Victorian historiography...The
Mid-Victorian generation, with all the scholarly trappings of a
volume in an Oxford history, is the benchmark against which the
next few decades of scholarship will be tested ... The
Mid-Victorian Generation amounts to a comprehensive, fair and
indispensible review of the last thirty years of scholarly work on
the period. Professor Hoppen has rendered an older complex
historiography more
intelligible. The book will quickly take its place alongside those
other vital tools of the Victorian specialist.'
Dr Miles Taylor, Kings College, UCL, Reviews in History
`...this is a book that celebrates the materialism of Mid-Victorian
society, perhaps more unashamedly than any previous general
history. There is a great deal in this history that can only
inspire awe in the reader. The overall standard of accuracy is very
high.'
Jonathan Parry, LRB
`Professor Hoppen has produced a very impressive study
reflecting...new ways of thinking...a balanced, rounded and
extremely engaging account of Britain between the repeal of the
Corn Laws and the failure of Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. As
well as offering a wide-ranging survey of the period, Hoppen's
study is valuable because it does not mask areas of disagreement
between historians in an attempt to provide synthesis. This is an
exceptionally
imaginative and absorbing book which reveals how those who may not
have qualified as voters had an impact on the debate on the
legitimacy of the state. Specialists will admire it; undergraduates
may find it hard
to put down.'
Pamela Pilbeam, Royal Holloway College, London. History
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