George Eliot

George Eliot PDF

Author: Kathryn Hughes

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0815411219

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This intensely engaging biography examines the extraordinary life of George Eliot from her childhood, through her scandalous liaison and social exile, to her hard-won status as one of Victorian England's literary elite.

Victorians Undone

Victorians Undone PDF

Author: Kathryn Hughes

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2018-02

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 142142570X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

The Victorians

The Victorians PDF

Author: A. N. Wilson

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 778

ISBN-13: 9780393049749

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Young Elizabeth

Young Elizabeth PDF

Author: Kate Williams

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-11-15

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1605988928

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

We can hardly imagine a Britain without Elizabeth II on the throne. It seems to be the job she was born for. And yet for much of her early life the young princess did not know the role that her future would hold. She was our accidental Queen.Elizabeth's determination to share in the struggles of her people marked her out from a young age. Her father initially refused to let her volunteer as a nurse during the Blitz, but relented when she was 18 and allowed her to work as a mechanic and truck driver for the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service. It was her forward-thinking approach that ensured that her coronation was televised, against the advice of politicians at the time.Kate Williams reveals how the 25-year-old young queen carved out a lasting role for herself amid the changes of the 20th century. Her monarchy would be a very different one to that of her parents and grandparents, and its continuing popularity in the 21st century owes much to the intelligence and elusive personality of this remarkable woman.

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

Published: 2012-04-09

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1400842182

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 1466893702

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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 Last Victorians

The Last Victorians PDF

Author: W. Sydney Robinson

Publisher: Biteback Publishing

Published: 2014-07-10

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1849547718

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Ever since the publication of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians in 1918 it has been fashionable to ridicule the great figures of the nineteenth century. From the longreigning monarch herself to the celebrated writers, philanthropists and politicians of the day, the Victorians have been dismissed as hypocrites and frauds - or worse. Yet not everyone in the twentieth century agreed with Strachey and his followers. To a handful of eccentrics born during Victoria's reign, the nineteenth century remained the greatest era in human history: a time of high culture for the wealthy, 'improvement' for the poor, and enlightened imperial rule for the 400 million inhabitants of the British Empire. They were, to friend and foe alike, 'the last Victorians' - relics of a bygone civilisation. In this daring group biography, W. Sydney Robinson explores the extraordinary lives of four of these Victorian survivors: the 'Puritan Home Secretary', William Joynson-Hicks (1865-1932); the 'Gloomy Dean' of St Paul's Cathedral, W. R. Inge (1860-1954); the belligerent founder of the BBC, John Reith (1889-1971), and the ultra-patriotic popular historian and journalist Arthur Bryant (1899- 1985). While revealing their manifold foibles and eccentricities, Robinson argues that these figures were truly great - even in error.

The New Victorians

The New Victorians PDF

Author: Stephen Pimpare

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9781565848399

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Parallels between anti-welfare propagandists of the nineteenth century and well-funded policy research organizations of today are uncovered, revealing lessons that emphasize the needed support for state defense of the poor.