The Gladstone Lament

Reveals the experience of reading in many cultures and across the agesCovers reading practices around the world from 19th-century Africa to the reading of music in the 20th-century USEmploys a wide range of methodologies a Showcases new research including reading at night; readers as writers and critics; and 21st-century neuroscienceChallenges previous models with new data on travelling readers, images of readers, and digital reading and fan culturesModern Readers explores the myriad places and spaces in which reading has typically taken place since the eighteenth century, from the bedrooms of the English upper classes, through large parts of nineteenth-century Africa and on-board ships and trains travelling the world, to twenty-first-century reading groups. It encompasses a range of genres from to science fiction, music and self-help to Government propaganda.

Gladstone's second ministry was one of failure and frustration. Even Liberal apologists and the party faithful could find little more than the Reform Act to offset the record of disasters abroad or the disruption of Irishmen at home. For some it was sufficient, and 1884 was a landmark comparable to 1689. But this book is not a chronicle of electoral revolution; rather, it traces the purposes of politicians through those months when legislative activity was concentrated on Franchise and Redistribution. Light is shed on Gladstone's control over both Cabinet and Commons, on Salisbury's emergence as party leader from Conservative chaos after Disraeli's death, and on the anti-democratic nature of Parnell's party. The essential argument is that the British political world of the 1880s was a world unto itself. Dr Jones is concerned with the complex political interaction of personalities and groupings in this select society at a time of particular historical interest, when parties were on the eve of their fracture and realignment over Home Rule.

This book provides a thorough analysis of the political career of William Gladstone, one of the most intriguing figures in modern British history. ‘Gladstone and the Logic of Victorian Politics’ captures the incredible richness of Gladstone’s political journey, tracing his evolution from Tory defender of a theocratic Anglican state to great reforming Liberal Prime Minister, always prepared to champion the ‘masses against the classes’. Each stage in Gladstone’s development is assessed in the light of recent historiographical debates and his own fascinating explanations of his conduct.

As the force that gave birth to Anglo-Catholicism, the Oxford Movement is generally treated as an Anglican phenomenon. Yet the influence of members who converted to Roman Catholicism proved decisive for the years leading up to the First Vatican Council and the definition of papal infallibility in Pastor Aeternus (1870). This collection of original essays edited by Parker and Pahls, explores how various Oxford Movement converts to Roman Catholicism contributed to debates surrounding papal infallibility in the 1850s, 1860s and beyond. From Henry Cardinal Manning and Msgr. George Talbot (a chamberlain to Pius 1X) to John Henry Cardinal Newman and Richard Simpson (a liberal Catholic journalist), the diverse voices of these converts marshaled arguments on both sides of the debate and played substantial roles in framing the outcome. The full story of Pastor Aeternus and its subsequent reception cannot be told without exploring the contribution of the combatants, dissidents, and collaborators who left the Church of England.

William Ewart Gladstone was perhaps the greatest colossus of the Victorian Age. Along with his formidable rival, Benjamin Disraeli, he dominated Britain's political scene from the moment of his appointment as chancellor of the exchequer in Aberdeen's famo