Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain, 1815-1914: Making Words Flesh (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781843835592)

This book is a study of nineteenth-century liberalism, understood as a process rather than a philosophy, policy or ideology.

Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain shows how liberal values reconstructed public space in Britain after the repeal of the Test and Corporations Acts [1828] and the passage of Catholic emancipation [1829].
It traces the century-long process against subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles. It examines the emergence of the intellectual authority of the universities and the social authority of the professions. It shows how these changes gave different political and social opportunities for new families such as the Bensons, the Venns, the Stracheys and the Trevelyans. When the social moorings of the confessional state diminished new forms of association emerged to devise and promote liberal values as a distinctive form of cultural capital. This cultural capital - antique and modern letters, mathematics - filled the public sphere and provided the materials for intellectual change. The final chapters on Roman Catholicism and nationalism reveal the fragilities of this public culture.

WILLIAM C. LUBENOW is Distinguished Professor of History at Stockton College, New Jersey. He is the author ofThe Politics of Government Growth, Parliamentary Politics and the Home Rule Crisis, and the Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914.

Author: William C. Lubenow
ISBN-10: 1843835592
ISBN-13: 9781843835592
Publisher: Boydell Press
Language: English
Published: 09/16/2010
Pages: 260
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.50w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2011
Reference and Research Bk News 12/01/2011 pg. 110