History of Ideas

Ruskin often disparaged attempts to alleviate conditions in the cities, yet he financed the pioneering early housing experiments of Octavia Hill in London, and established a museum for working men in Sheffield. At the same time, he strove to promote the rural ideal and inspired the revival of some rural handicrafts. Both a self-proclaimed ‘violent Tory of the old school’ and a ‘communist’, the paradoxical John Ruskin, the leading Victorian art and social critic, inspired a younger generation with his political ideas and social experiments. A wide range of individuals, consciously indebted to him, engaged in social action designed to ameliorate the worst excesses of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century British industrial capitalism. Progressive political thinkers and social activists answered Ruskin's challenge to confront the ugliness and corruption of Victorian society, and to reject the hypocrisy of the utilitarian philosophy which underpinned it. This book is the first study to approach Ruskin's legacy in terms of the institutional and organisational contexts in which his ideas flourished. It recreates the associational culture of a network of influence which was united by a shared enthusiasm inspired by one man. The Guild of St. George embodied his social challenge, and provided a point of focus for his most loyal disciples. Many of the Oxford undergraduates inspired by his lectures, and his practical scheme to rebuild the road at Hinksey, helped to found and guide the university settlements. Ruskin societies emerged in the large cities to promote the study of his work and to effect civic reforms on Ruskinian lines. Many of the pioneers of the nascent Labour movement developed their political consciousnesses whilst reading his work. In the early life and career of John Howard Whitehouse, parliamentarian and educationist, these strands of influence combined, helping him to become Ruskin's truest disciple.

Edmund Burke (1730–1797) was one of the most profound, versatile, and accomplished thinkers of the eighteenth century. Born and educated in Dublin, he moved to London to study law, but remained to make a career in English politics, completing A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) before entering the political arena. A Member of Parliament for nearly thirty years, his speeches are still read and studied as classics of political thought, and through his best-known work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), he has continued to exercise a posthumous influence as ‘the father of conservatism’. This, the first of two volumes, covers the years between 1730–1784, and describes Burke's Irish upbringing and education, early writing, and his parliamentary career throughout the momentous years of the American War of Independence. Lavishly illustrated, the book provides an authoritative account of the complexity and breadth of Burke's philosophical and political writing and examines its origins in his personal experiences and the political world of his day.

This is the concluding volume of a biography of Edmund Burke, a key figure in eighteenth-century British and Irish politics and intellectual life. Covering the years 1784–97, its leading themes are India and the French Revolution. Burke was largely responsible for the impeachment of Warren Hastings, former Governor-General of Bengal, whose long trial is recognized as a landmark in the history of Britain's relationship with India. The author provides the first day-by-day account of the entire trial, highlighting some of the many disputes about evidence, as well as the great speeches by Burke and others. In 1790, Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France, the earliest sustained attack on the principles of the Revolution. This remains, to this day, the most widely read book on the subject. Additionally, the biography examines Burke's parliamentary career, his family, friendships, philanthropy, and personality. The book's numerous illustrations and contemporary caricatures convey how Burke was perceived by an uncomprehending public. Controversial in his time, he is now regarded as one of the greatest orators in the English language, as well as one of the most influential political philosophers in the Western tradition.

Scholars have become increasingly interested in how modern national consciousness comes into being through fictional narratives. Literature is of particular importance to this process, for it is responsible for tracing the nation's evolution through glorious tales of its history. In nineteenth-century Britain, the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood played an important role in the construction of contemporary national identity. These two legends provide excellent windows through which to view British culture, because they provide very different perspectives. King Arthur and Robin Hood have traditionally been diametrically opposed in terms of their ideological orientation. The former is a king, a man at the pinnacle of the social and political hierarchy, whereas the latter is an outlaw, and is therefore completely outside conventional hierarchical structures. The fact that two such different figures could simultaneously function as British national heroes suggests that nineteenth-century British nationalism did not represent a single set of values and ideas, but rather that it was forced to assimilate a variety of competing points of view.

This is the story of one of the great literary rows of the 19th century, between one of its greatest historians and one of its sharpest critics. The quarrel began in the House of Commons during the debates of 1831–2 on parliamentary reform and was continued in the quarterly reviews. Even in a political setting, it had a historical dimension. Croker taunted Macaulay for being ignorant of the French Revolution. Macaulay replied by pouring scorn on Croker's accuracy as editor of Boswell's Johnson. The bitterness of the clash made subsequent compromise impossible. Sixteen years later, Croker wrote a long damning review of the first two volumes of Macaulay's History of England. Posterity admires success, and as Macaulay's writings have eclipsed Croker's it has usually been assumed that Croker was moved by mere political spite. This book shows that this verdict is unfair, that Croker's political opinions were both less rancorous and more interesting, and that Macaulay's own scholarship was far from faultless. It also considers each man's historical writing alongside his politics and argues that, while Croker's critical method was sharpened by his politics, Macaulay's political opinions were much more independent of party, and that he is not the typical Whig historian of legend. The book illustrates how the two men actually had many ideas in common, and how the commentators who have seen only political dislike have missed the real purpose of the History of England and what made it the most successful historical work in English literature.