The Victorians and the Stuart Heritage: Interpretations of a Discordant Past

by Timothy Lang

Overview

This book explores how a group of nineteenth-century British historians came to terms with one of the formative periods in their nation's past—the seventeenth century in general and the era of Cromwell and the Puritans in particular. Included are well-known figures such as Macaulay and Carlyle, who are of interest to literary scholars as well as to historians, and more specialized writers such as Henry Hallam and S.R. Gardiner. The book argues that these historians found the seventeenth century problematic because of its connection with many contemporary political and, especially, religious issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521474641
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/13/1995
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.67(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: politics, religion and history: David Hume and the Victorian debate; 1. Henry Hallam and early nineteenth-century Whiggism; 2. Thomas Babington Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy; 3. Puritanism and the ideology of dissent; 4. Samuel Rawson Gardiner and the search for national consensus; 5. Cromwell and the late Victorians; Epilogue: beyond the Victorians; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...a perceptive and nuanced study of the manner in which successive generations of nineteenth-century historians interpreted the Puritan Revolution....[a] richly textured intellectual history." American Historical Review

"...he [Lang] charts a course through a broad sea of biographical, intellectual, and historical particulars from the seventeenth through late nineteenth centuries without losing his readers' attention....a useful addition to any undergraduate library's history collection." Dorothy-Bundy Potter, History

"This remains a valuable scholarly study, showing how one period of the past used another more distant past to forge its own identity." Doris Goldstein, Albion

"Lang can congratulate himself on having added a stimulating and informative study to the historiography of Victorian historiography. He reminds us of the manner in which the preoccupations of an era's leaders appeal to the past for legitimation. Such studies become hazardous only if they imply-as Lang's does not-that all works of history are equally condemned tp present-mindedness and if they deny that products of the painstaking as well as empathetic scholarship of earlier centuries may retain permanent value as foundation stones on which successors may build." Walter L. Arnstein, Victorian Studies

From the Publisher