Victorians

As a committed contrarian and one who thought he had read enough about Victorian England to skip "The Victorians", I went directly to "After the Victorians" and having it enjoyed it tremendously, had to re-double and get back to the beginning, if you will. And it was worth it. As demonstrated by other reviews, it is somewhat difficult to categorize Wilson's approach to this ever-fascinating period. It's too opinionated to be "History" and too historical to be merely opinion. He calls each of these volumes a "portrait of an age", and I think that's close enough. As always, the important question is whether this or any other tome (and this IS a tome) justifies the time and effort necessary to digest it. To me, the answer is an unqualified yes. I believe what makes the book (and its successor) so enjoyable is Wilson's thorough command of his subject which in turn enables him to recount events and the lives and relationships of various personages with a sure, and frequently offbeat, hand. He knows what he's talking about and thus feels free to tell the story in his own way rather than as might be expected from a more traditional historian. And at least this reader thoroughly enjoyed "his own way". And, by the way, if you're looking for a book on the everyday lives of the Victorians, try Judith Flanders' "Inside the Victorian Home"; terrifically well-told story by a marvelous writer.

Some reviewers are offended by books in which the author vents his opinions. Why is this? A reader should be offended if an author tries to present his biases as truth, but when Mr. Wilson gives an opinion you know in no uncertain terms that it is an opinion. That, from my viewpoint, is what makes this book an entertaining read. I think that Henry James and Oscar Wilde were talented authors, but Wilson trashes them, and I laughed reading his scornful commentary on those two. He jumps all over the aristocracy and the politicians (most often the aristocrat is also the politician), and they deserve what they get. When Prince Albert dies Wilson opines that the only intellectual light bulb in the royal family has now been extinguished. I should point out that this book is actually the second of A.N. Wilson's history of the Victorian era. The first book, God's Cathedral, was more of an intellectual history that, among other things, explored the waning of religion in Britain. Actually I found it to be the more interesting of the two books, but then I am more intrigued by intellectual history than by political history which is the topic of The Victorians. Indeed there is a bit of a problem with this book. Someone wanders into the book, stays a few paragraphs, and quickly vanishes without a trace. My point of view, however, is that the value of this book is to create a vivid portrait of the Victorian era. In the long run it is not that important that you remember who was Prime Minister in 1866 (Russell). What you do take away from this book is how the aristocracy ruled Britain without any concern for the well being of its people. It is amazing to read that members of parliament stood up to virtuously denounce the slave trade while small children were working 12 hours a day in British coal mines. And how proud everyone was of the higher civilization that was being brought to the inferior peoples of India. And the neglect which followed the potato famine in Ireland. And the laws that treated women as chattel. Then, too, there is the tremendous support given to Britain's foreign wars by the general populace. They seemed to view them all as romantic adventures, including the Boer war where the Brits put 117,000 Boers in concentration camps (mostly women and children). Twenty thousand died there, mostly children. Over the long years of Queen Victoria's reign there was change. Those millions of common people who struggled to make a living began to unite, and their voices and actions were slowly but surely heard. In the final years of the century the aristocrats went into decline, ruined by estate taxes, low land rents, agricultural depression, and income taxes. Read this book and be prepared to get a broad view of the Victorian era. You won't be tested on the material, so don't get perturbed if you can't remember all the names and dates. When I finished the book I felt that I had gotten the picture that Wilson tried to paint. Hey if you really want to st

Even those who know the Victorian period well will still derive, I think, much pleasure from reading this elegantly written book. Some readers may find Wilson's personality somewhat obtrusive: he is consistently judgmental, never fails to comment with indignation on the cruelties and injustices Victorian society, frequently brings out similarities and differences between those days and our own, is often fashionably ironic about the period, and on many occasions is idiosyncratic about the aspects on which he focuses. But he also does justice to Victorian virtues and above all to the many-sidedness of the age. The width of his reading in history and literature is formidable. He certainly brings the period and its personalities to life; the main political events of the century are covered well; and he is never boring.

The full panoply of the Victorian Age is put on display in this essential book: royalty idiotic and benign, doubting divines, philosophers materialistic and otherwise, artists, authors, politicians and aristocrats, all supported by a working class (and farmers) who toiled and, surprisingly to followers of the sorry tale of revolutionary socialism on the continent, did not rise in revolt. Why this did not happen, pace previous reviewers on this site, makes for a fascinating story. Wilson explains this paradox in a tour de force of historical writing that should satisfy historians of quantity as well as the heirs of Gibbon who make of history an elegant art. Wilson's schematic is to break up the era into chronological decades each of which is dominated by the salient issues/personalities. N.B. you will need at least to have heard of some of these people and issues as Wilson has neither space nor inclination to explain everyone and everything to the uninitiated. For example, the eternal duet of Disraeli and Gladstone are limned by the reflections of the era; you are expected to know something of whence they came. The same holds for personalities as diverse as Darwin and Wilde and issues as wide-ranging as the Reform Bills and Mesmerism. Peter Gay may have delved deeper, but what one-volume history could? Even Gibbon could have used some judicious editing as with his unedifying chronicle of the endless quarrels of the Alexandrine Church. Wilson is nothing if not even-handed. Even so, he gives us such gems as: "Gladstone's earnest desire to improve the human race made him popular with Nonconformist Northern grocers". Indeed. As another example Wilson puts paid once and for all to the reputation of Pius IX while also making a convincing case for the greatness of Cardinal Manning (the historically omnipresent Cardinal Newman suffers in comparison). The book's treatment of the horrible working and living conditions of the industrial workers, Irish peasants and the poorer denizens of the large cities should serve as a corrective to those who think of Victorian life as something reflected on Quality Street candy tins. Marx may have been perplexed by the failure of all this misery to lead to revolution but, despite earlier critics, Wilson gives, to my mind, a rational explanation of why the the Boer War and the death of Queen Victoria, for example, concentrated the minds of the 'lower' classes more than quotidian miseries. Beginning in 1834 with the burning of the Houses of Parliament and ending with the dead Queen Victoria floating past warships of many nations in 1901, judicious readers of this book will be astounded by the breadth of Wilson's learning. Enjoy this book for what it is: a discursive, sometimes idiosyncratic, always entertaining look at an era that reverberates to this day.

A. N. Wilson's career and writing have earned him, according to The Oxford Companion to English Literature, the "reputation as an acerbic and provocatively conservative critic and [as] an oft-quoted example of 'fogeydom' because of his traditional values and his High Church sympathies." (Indeed, the word 'fogey' appears so often in the British press alongside Wilson's name that they have nearly become synonyms.) In one sense, then, rarely has a topic found a more apt chronicler. Conversely, I approached this book with more than a little trepidation, concerned that, in the manner of Jacques Barzun, Wilson would reflect on the nineteenth century and approvingly and longingly recount the "good old days." I needn't have worried. While Wilson's history is certainly traditional in its telling, his tone is persistently skeptical, his judgment is stern, and his sensibilities--on race, on sex, on religion, on class--are firmly entrenched in the 21st century. (So much so that Gertrude Himmelfarb, the closest thing we Americans have to a fogey, panned the book in the pages of the Atlantic.) He remains enamored of its successes and legacy, yet he is clearly repulsed by its excesses and chauvinism. "The Victorians" isn't an introductory survey. Wilson assumes his (British) audience has heard of Gladstone and Parnell, read a little of John Ruskin, and knows when and where the Boer War occurred. If the name of Sir Robert Peel means nothing to you, then you will be lost from the opening pages. Instead, Wilson has crafted a review of his studies of the century, filled with delightful (and often humorous) anecdotes laced with opinionated assessments and revisionist implications. And, unlike similar topical histories, Wilson's book reads in parts like a novel (or, more accurately, a series of thematically linked stories); at times I found it difficult to put down. From his deconstruction of the myth of the "martyrdom" of General Charles George Gordon at the hands of African natives to a deft analysis of popular music-hall entertainment, from the aristocracy and the monarchy to dockworkers, child laborers, and victims of colonialism--his book leaves few aspects of the era untouched. Even when I disagreed with his conclusions, I enjoyed Wilson's engaging wit and (yes) old-fashioned stories too much to care. By the time I finished this immense book, I understood that his opening sentence--"The Victorians are still with us"--was offered dubiously, perhaps even ominously, but certainly not nostalgically.