High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain

An ambitious exploration of the making of the Victorian Age—and the Victorian mind—by a master historian.

Britain in the 1840s was a country wracked by poverty, unrest, and uncertainty; there were attempts to assassinate the queen and her prime minister; and the ruling class lived in fear of riot and revolution. By the 1880s it was a confident nation of progress and prosperity, transformed not just by industrialization but by new attitudes to politics, education, women, and the working class...