The Victorians

This one-volume history of Britain in Victoria's reign moves from the 1830s through Peel and the Corn Laws, the Irish famine, the Crimean War, and the rivalry of Gladstone and Disraeli, on to late-century empire and labour. Wilson intercuts political narrative with scientists, novelists, preachers, and industrial cities, treating faith, doubt, and class as parts of the same century. Court, Commons, and slum streets appear in turn. The book is a biographical-social survey of the period, not a monograph on a single reform and not a novel.

Bound in green buckram, blocked with a design by David Pearson. Green endpapers. Pale green slipcase printed with a photograph of Mansion House Street, London, c.1896.