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A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?: England 1783-1846 (New Oxford History of England)

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Author: Boyd Hilton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

3 reviews
Sales Rank: 122493

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 784
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.7

ISBN: 0199218919
Dewey Decimal Number: 942.07
EAN: 9780199218912
ASIN: 0199218919

Publication Date: June 19, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New. SKU 0199218919. Mint Condition - with immediate next working day shipment from the UK to anywhere in the world.

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•	Hardcover - A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?: England 1783-1846 (New Oxford History of England)

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Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

Certainly not 'Bad', in more than a few parts 'Mad', but consistently brilliant. May 26, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

I could not disagree more with the previous review. This book does not intend to be a comprehensive survey of all aspects of British history of the period - that would be impossible in one volume - but even if this book's focus is high politics and ideologies, it does devote almost 100 pages to social and economic issues.

The triumph of this book is to study political mentalities in their fullest context. What could be seen as undue attention to economic theory or romantic philosophy provides the very context from which Victorian liberalism developed, and places its heroes - Malthus, Smith, Ricardo and most importantly Burke - in direct opposition to romantics both within the Tory party and without. This is Hilton's dicotomy between the rationalist and mechanist 'liberals', epitomised by Canning, Peel and Gladstone later in the century, and the organicist Coleridgeans, with Wellington among their ranks.

This dialectic structure is analysed in all its manifestations through political culture, from developments in evolutionary theory to medieval historiography, and it is Hilton's great achievement to show how such a framework can spread across such a diverse period and dominate our views of the later Victorians. The most pasisonate and fascinating secitons of the book are the sections analysing evangelical thought, outlining its preponderance in all political and cultural life. Later figures such as Gladstone and Disraeli cannot be understood fully if their development is not placed within this context, whilst the cold, harsh liberalism attributable to the Victorian age finds personality here, and its edges are more clearly defined and understood in the context of cultural struggle. Much of this model is slightly unfashionable in high political or cultural historiography, but that does not diminish the brilliance of Hilton's analysis one bit (see his other work, particularly 'The Age of Atonement' for a more explicitly interpretative view of the period).

A must have book for all students of this period.

3 out of 5 stars

Sound but a little disappointing July 17, 2006
12 out of 15 found this review helpful

This was in some ways a strange volume that compares oddly with other volumes of the New Oxford History of England. The series has suffered from being unsure as to whether it is designed to replace or supplement the earlier Oxford History of England. This volume is excellent on traditional political history, especially in the most limited sense of the term, which is of the formation and fall of governments. Indeed, at times it reads like a history of England written from the point of view of the Palace of Westminster. The book gives a full account of the political history of the period; of the formation of governments and of the legislation and of the intellectual thought of the period. However, it seems strangely lacking in wider analysis. The account of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is, in a book of over 600 pages covering only 63 years, for over a third of which Britain was involved in a desperate struggle for its very existence, rather slight. No one would expect a detailed survey of military history of the period; this is not the function of such a work, but a wider account of the Wars and of their impact on the nation seems called for. Equally, the volume has a heavy emphasis on the intellectual history of the period, which is both excessive and wholly out of balance with that in the rest of the Series (though it would seem very much part of the background and publishing history of the author; it may therefore be the late General Editor who ought to be criticised here). There is, I think, in a period that takes in the Industrial Revolution and the latter part of the Agricultural Revolution, more economic theory and philosophy than there is of economic history. The volume also suffers from a desire on the part of the author to draw more less (in my view less) apposite parallels between the history of the period and the politics of modern Britain. Particularly in contrast with Hoppen's magnificent volume in this series, which immediately follows this this one chronologically, this is disappointing, as it is in contrast with both Prestwich's and Harris's recently published volumes on the mediaeval period. I would strongly recommend this volume to anyone seeking an account of the political history of the period. As a wider vision of English society in this period I would not recommend it. It is I think, though a sound and highly readable work, inferior to most of the other volumes in this series.

4 out of 5 stars

Comprehensive history June 28, 2006
3 out of 9 found this review helpful

From the French Revolution to Chartism, life in England is comprehensively surveyed. This is not only political history but all of English life is surveyed including religion and culture. It is interesting to read of the curtailment of civil liberties after the French Revolution and the threat of Napoleonic invasion. One sees parallels with todays civil repressive measures in the face of the war on terrorism. Full of interesting detail like the first man to go back to having a beard in the 1820s. I shall want to read more in this series.