It is impossible to describe the age of Britain's Queen Victoria in a few sentences:
it was so varied, so full of paradoxes. An age of material splendour and technical
advance, it was also marked by unprecedented poverty, overcrowding and disease.
While the British Empire expanded and the new middle classes lived in luxury,
British women and children were working long hours in appalling conditions in
mines and factories. Queen Victoria herself, a model of wifely-devotion, and
in many ways a powerful, strong-willed sovereign, took little interest in
some of her country's domestic problems.
Fortunately, it was an age of high moral purpose and intellectual energy.
Reformers and philanthropists, responding to the dangers and misery caused
by the growth of cities and the exploitation of workers, laid the foundations
for welfare and education programs. Writers like Charles Dickens offered honest
pictures of life as it was. Designers like William Morris challenged the
popular liking for fussy clothing and overdecorated rooms with simpler styles
more appropriate to the new age of machinery.
The Victorians are often called priggish, sentimental, and hypocritical,
but they had an awe-inspiring energy. Margaret Drabble reminds us that we
still live in the shadow of their mighty achievements, and that their ideas
continue to inspire and haunt use.
The text is enhanced by twenty-four pages of black-and-white illustrations
and eight pages of full colour, and a bibliography and index are included.
Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield and educated at York and Cambridge.
She is a full-time writer, ahs had eight novels published as well as a
biography of Arnold Bennett and a short critical account of Wordsworth,
and has won three prizes; the John Llewellyn Rhys, the James Tait Black and the E.M. Forster award.
She teaches part time at an adult education college in London and lives in Hampstead with her
three children. |
