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1895: Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain

Nicholas Freeman

Oscar Wilde's disastrous libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry dominated British newspapers during the spring of 1895. This book shows that the Wilde scandal was just one of ... More

Oscar Wilde's disastrous libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry dominated British newspapers during the spring of 1895. This book shows that the Wilde scandal was just one of many events to capture the public's imagination that year. Had Jack the Ripper returned? Did the Prime Minister have a dreadful secret? Were Aubrey Beardsley's drawings corrupting the nation? Were overpaid foreign players ruining English football? Could cricket save a nation from moral ruin? Freak weather, flu, a General Election, industrial unrest, New Women, fraud, accidents, anarchists, balloons and bicycles all stirred up interest and alarm. The book shows how this turbulent year is at the same time far removed from our own day and strangely familiar. It interweaves literature, politics and historical biography with topics such as crime, the weather, sport, visual art and journalism to give an overarching view of everyday life in 1895. The book draws on diverse primary sources, from the Aberdeen Weekly Journal to the Women's Signal Budget, and from the Illustrated Police News to The Yellow Book; and is illustrated with stills from plays and reproductions of newspaper front pages, to bring Victorian culture to life. Less

“A Gentleman and an Officer”: A Military and Social History of James B. Griffin's Civil War

James B. Griffin

Judith N. McArthur, Orville Vernon Burton (eds)

In 1861, James B. Griffin left Edgefield, South Carolina, and rode off to Virginia to take up duty with the Confederate Army. He was thirty-five years old, a wealthy planter, and the ... More

In 1861, James B. Griffin left Edgefield, South Carolina, and rode off to Virginia to take up duty with the Confederate Army. He was thirty-five years old, a wealthy planter, and the owner of sixty-one slaves when he joined Wade Hampton's elite Legion as a major of cavalry. This book features eighty of Griffin's letters written at the Virginia front, and during later postings on the South Carolina coast, to his wife Leila Burt Griffin. The letters encompass Griffin's entire Civil War service, detailing living conditions and military maneuvers, the jockeying for position among officers, and the different ways in which officers and enlisted men interacted. The letters shed light on the life of a middle officer—a life of extreme military hardship, complicated further by the need for reassurance about personal valor and status common to men of the southern gentry. Griffin describes secret troop movements, such as the Hampton Legion's role in the Peninsula Campaign. Here he relates the march from Manassas to Fredricksburg, the siege of Yorktown and the retreat to Richmond, and the fighting at Eltham's landing and Seven Pines, where Griffin commanded the Legion after Hampton was wounded. Griffin recounts day-to-day issues, from the weather to gossip. Monumental historical events sent Griffin off to war but his heartfelt considerations were about his family, his community, and his own personal pride. Griffin's letters present the Civil War as the ordeal by fire that tested and verified—or modified—Southern upperclass values. Less

‘A Nation of Beggars’?: Priests, People, and Politics in Famine Ireland, 1846–1852

Donal A. Kerr

This is the first full account of the role of the Irish Catholic Church in the Great Famine of 1846 and its aftermath. The author shows how the Famine and the subsequent evictions led to ... More

This is the first full account of the role of the Irish Catholic Church in the Great Famine of 1846 and its aftermath. The author shows how the Famine and the subsequent evictions led to rural violence and a spate of assassinations culminating in the murder of Major Mahon, which the local parish priest was accused of inciting. Savage denunciations followed in press and parliament. In conjunction with the belief that Pope Pius IX had blessed the struggle of oppressed nationalities, many priests became involved in the run-up to the Young Ireland Rebellion. These years also saw a sharpening of religious tension as Protestant Evangelicals made an all-out effort to Protestantine Ireland. The author has charted how the Famine and the violence soured relations between the Church and State and ultimately destroyed Lord John Russell’s dream of bringing a golden age to Ireland. Less

A. J. Tomlinson: Plainfolk Modernist

Roger Glenn Robins

This book explores the life of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, chronicling his childhood and family life, spiritual journey, missionary work, and his role in establishing the Church of God. ... More

This book explores the life of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, chronicling his childhood and family life, spiritual journey, missionary work, and his role in establishing the Church of God. Its main objective is to reconcile the holiness-pentecostal tradition to its origins, and the trajectory of its subsequent history. The term “plainfolk modernist” is coined, to suggest that both Tomlinson and the world he inhabited expressed a vibrant strain of modernism, though voiced in the idioms of American plainfolk culture. Less

A.S. Byatt: Critical Storytelling

Alexa Alfer, Amy J. Edwards de Campos

This comprehensive study of A. S. Byatt's work spans virtually her entire career and offers readings of all of her works of fiction up to and including her Man-Booker-shortlisted novel ... More

This comprehensive study of A. S. Byatt's work spans virtually her entire career and offers readings of all of her works of fiction up to and including her Man-Booker-shortlisted novel The Children's Book (2009). The chapters combine an overview of Byatt's œuvre to date with close critical analysis of all her major works. The book also considers Byatt's critical writings and journalism, situating her beyond the immediate context of her fiction. The chapters argue that Byatt is not only important as a storyteller, but also as an eminent critic and public intellectual. Advancing the concept of ‘critical storytelling’ as a hallmark of Byatt's project as a writer, the chapters retrace Byatt's wide-ranging engagement with both literary and critical traditions. This results in positioning Byatt in the wider literary landscape. Less

Aaron Hill: The Muses' Projector, 1685-1750

Christine Gerrard

During his lifetime Aaron Hill was one of the most lively cultural patrons and brokers on the London literary scene — an image hard to square with the company of undistinguished ... More

During his lifetime Aaron Hill was one of the most lively cultural patrons and brokers on the London literary scene — an image hard to square with the company of undistinguished scribblers to which Pope relegated him in the Dunciad. This book aims to correct the distorted picture of the Augustan cultural scene which Pope passed down to posterity. Hill deliberately confronted Pope in his attempt to free poetry's sublime and visionary potential from the stale platitudes of neo-classical convention. An early champion of women poets, he also enjoyed close relationships with Eliza Haywood and Martha Fowke, and brought his three writing daughters Urania, Astrea, and Minerva into close contact with his lifelong friend the novelist Samuel Richardson. In 1711 Hill, as stage manager and librettist, introduced Handel to the English stage, as well as lobbying tirelessly for innovation in the 18th-century theatre. His entrepreneurial energies, directed at both commercial and cultural projects, mirror the zeitgeist of early Hanoverian Britain. Less

Abandoned in the Heartland: Work, Family, and Living in East St. Louis

Jennifer Hamer

Urban poverty, along with all of its poignant manifestations, is moving from city centers to working-class and industrial suburbs in contemporary America, and nowhere is this more ... More

Urban poverty, along with all of its poignant manifestations, is moving from city centers to working-class and industrial suburbs in contemporary America, and nowhere is this more evident than in East St. Louis, Illinois. Once a thriving manufacturing and transportation center, East St. Louis is now known for its unemployment, crime, and collapsing infrastructure. This book takes us into the lives of East St. Louis's predominantly African American residents to find out what has happened since industry abandoned the city, and jobs, quality schools, and city services disappeared, leaving people isolated and imperiled. It introduces men who search for meaning and opportunity in dead-end jobs, women who often take on caretaking responsibilities until well into old age, and parents who have the impossible task of protecting their children in this dangerous, and literally toxic, environment. Illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs showing how the city has changed over time, the book, full of stories of courage and fortitude, offers a vision of the transformed circumstances of life in one American suburb. Less

Abandoning Historical Conflict: Former Political Prisoners and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland

Peter Shirlow, Jon Tonge, James McAuley

Drawing on more than 150 interviews with former IRA, INLA, UVF and UFF prisoners, this book is a major analysis of why Northern Ireland has seen a transition from war to peace. Most ... More

Drawing on more than 150 interviews with former IRA, INLA, UVF and UFF prisoners, this book is a major analysis of why Northern Ireland has seen a transition from war to peace. Most accounts of the peace process are ‘top-down’, relying upon the views of political elites. This book is ‘bottom-up’, analysing the voices of those who actually ‘fought the war’. What made them fight, why did they stop and what are the lessons for other conflict zones? Using unrivalled access to members of the armed groups, the book offers a critical appraisal of one-dimensional accounts of the onset of peace, grounded in ‘mutually hurting stalemate’ and ‘ripeness’, which downgrade the political and economic aspects of conflict. Military stalemate had been evident since the early 1970s and offers little in explaining the timing of the peace process. Moreover, republicans and loyalists based their ceasefires upon very different perceptions of transformation or victory. Based on a Leverhulme Trust project, the book offers an analysis based on subtle interplays of military, political, economic and personal changes and experiences. Combined, these allowed combatants to move from violence to peace whilst retaining core ideological beliefs and maintaining long-term constitutional visions. Former prisoners now act as ambassadors for peace in Northern Ireland. Knowledge of why and how combatants switched to peaceful methodologies amid widespread skepticism over prospects for peace is essential to our understanding of the management of global peace processes. Less

The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

In this age of globalization, the eighteenth-century priest and abolitionist Henri Grégoire has often been called a man ahead of his time. An icon of anti-racism, a hero to people from ... More

In this age of globalization, the eighteenth-century priest and abolitionist Henri Grégoire has often been called a man ahead of his time. An icon of anti-racism, a hero to people from Ho Chi Minh to French Jews, Grégoire has been particularly celebrated since 1989, when the French government placed him in the Pantheon as a model of ideals of universalism and human rights. In this biography, based on newly discovered and previously overlooked material, we gain access to the full complexity of Grégoire's intellectual and political universe as well as the compelling nature of his persona. His life offers an extraordinary vantage from which to view large issues in European and world history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and provides provocative insights into many of the prevailing tensions, ideals, and paradoxes of the twenty-first century. Focusing on Grégoire's idea of “regeneration,” that people could literally be made anew, the book argues that revolutionary universalism was more complicated than it appeared. Tracing the French Revolution's long-term legacy, it suggests that while it spread concepts of equality and liberation throughout the world, its ideals also helped to justify colonialism and conquest. Less

The Abbey Theatre, 1899-1999: Form and Pressure

Robert Welch

A century ago this year, productions of W. B. Yeats' The Countess Cathleen and Edward Martyn's The Heather Field inaugurated the Irish Literary Theatre, which was to take its name from ... More

A century ago this year, productions of W. B. Yeats' The Countess Cathleen and Edward Martyn's The Heather Field inaugurated the Irish Literary Theatre, which was to take its name from its home in Abbey Street, Dublin. Despite riot, fire, and critical controversy, the Abbey Theatre has housed Ireland's National Theatre ever since. This is the first history of the Abbey to discuss the plays and the personalities in their underlying historical and political context, to give due weight to the theatre's work in Irish, and to take stock of its artistic and financial development up to the present. The research for the book draws extensively on archive sources, especially the manuscript holdings on the Abbey at the National Library of Ireland. Many outstanding plays are examined, with detailed analysis of their form and their affective and emotional content; and persistent themes in the Abbey's output are identified — visions of an ideal community; the revival of Irish; the hunger for land and money; the restrictions of a society undergoing profound change. But these are integrated with accounts of the Abbey's people, from Yeats, Martyn, and Lady Gregory, whose brainchild it was, to the actors, playwrights, directors, and managers who have followed — among them the Fays, Synge, O'Casey, Murray, Robinson, Shiels, Johnston, Murphy, Molloy, Friel, McGuiness, Deevy, Carr, and many others. The role of directors and policy-makers, and the struggle for financial security, subsidy, and new-style ‘partnerships’, is discussed as a crucial part of the theatre's continuing evolution. Less