Philanthropy, a 'love of humankind', is now thought of as the rich giving to good causes. The Reputation of Philanthropy explores how this came about and asks why praise for philanthropists has always been matched by criticism. Original and accessible, the book will inform thinking about the proper role for philanthropy today.

First published in 1905, this book charts the history of English philanthropy from the Elizabethan period through to the nineteenth century. In doing so, Benjamin Kirkman Gray posed some important questions about modern philanthropy, and reflected on the meaning and worth of philanthropy. Through historical study, the author discussed this complex question, which, in a time before the development of the British welfare state, was particularly topical. This book will be of interest to those studying the history of philanthropy, social welfare and poverty.

In Philanthropy, Patronage, and Civil Society, Thomas Adam has assembled a comparative set of case studies that challenge long-held and little-studied assumptions about the modern development of philanthropy. Histories of philanthropy have often neglected European patterns of giving and the importance of financial patronage to the emergence of modern industrialized societies. It has long been assumed, for example, that Germany never developed civic traditions of philanthropy as in the United States. In truth, however, 19th-century German museums, art galleries, and social housing projects were not only privately founded and supported, they were also blueprints for the creation of similar public institutions in North America. The comparative method of the essays also reveals the extent to which the wealthy classes on both sides of the Atlantic defined themselves through their philanthropic activities. Contributors are Thomas Adam, Maria Benjamin Baader, Karsten Borgmann, Tobias Brinkmann, Brett Fairbairn, Eckhardt Fuchs, David C. Hammack, Dieter Hoffmann, Simone Lässig, Margaret Eleanor Menninger, and Susannah Morris.

In this study of voluntary charities in eighteenth-century London, Donna Andrew reconsiders the adequacy of humanitarianism as an explanation for the wave of charitable theorizing and experimentation that characterized this period. Focusing on London, the most visible area of both destitution and social experimentation, this book examines the political as well as benevolent motives behind the great expansion of public institutions--nondenominational organizations seeking not only to relieve hardship, but to benefit the nation directly--funded and run by voluntary associations of citizens. The needs of police, the maintaining of civil order and the refining of society, were thought by many ordinary citizens to be central to the expansion of England's role in the world and to the upholding of the country's peace at home. Drawing on previously unexplored and unsynthesized materials, this work reveals the interaction between charitable theorizing and practical efforts to improve the condition of the poor. The author argues that it is impossible to comprehend eighteenth-century charity without taking into account its perceived social utility, which altered as circumstances mandated. For example, the charities of the 1740s and 1750s, founded to aid in the strengthening of England's international supremacy, lost their public support as current opinions of England's most urgent needs changed. Creating and responding to new visions of what well-directed charities might accomplish, late-century philanthropists tried using charitable institutions to reknit what they believed was a badly damaged social fabric. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Whilst in certain quarters it may be fashionable to suppose that there is no such thing as society historians, they have had no difficulty in finding their subject. The difficulty, rather, is that an outpouring of research and writing is hard for anyone but the specialist to keep up with the literature or grasp the overall picture. In these three volumes, as is the tradition in Cambridge Histories, a team of specialists has assembled the jigsaw of topical monographic research and presented an interpretation of the development of modern British society since 1750, from three perspectives: those of regional communities, the working and living environment, and social institutions. Each volume is self-contained, and each contribution, thematically defined, contains its own chronology of the period under review. Taken as a whole they offer an authoritative and comprehensive view of the manner and method of the shaping of society in the two centuries of unprecedented demographic and economic change.

Originally published in 1972, The Purchase of Paradise is an account of medieval philanthropy and looks at the late medieval aristocracy as a social, rather than political group. The book analyses their voluntary behaviour, their gift giving and the Church, and addresses the nature of charity in the Middle Ages, providing an insight into the noble families of the time. The book depicts charitable practices within the family, such as the buying of prayers for relatives, and the family traditions of support for favoured houses lasting through several generations. The book shows that the family was the most operative unit for most forms of benefaction and ecclesiastical contact, and that the hard necessities of baronial politics were often ignored when men turned their thoughts to philanthropy and prayers for their immortal souls. The book will of value to historians and sociologists alike, as well as those working in the field of anthropology.

This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions. Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her Subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works. In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.