First published in 1978, this book explores everyday Victorian likes and dislikes, manners, fashions, ideals and illusions. It discusses their changing attitudes to women, children, the poor, the common soldier and their country. It explains the rise and fall of home entertainment, the growth of soccer, racing and cricket to national sports, the rise of public schools and new professions as well as the appeal of missionary work. It is argued that all this happened not because the Victorians were fools, hypocrites or villains, but because they sensibly adapted themselves to peculiar and novel circumstances. This title will be of interest to students of history.

Wilson singles out those whose lives illuminate the 19th century--Darwin, Marx, Gladstone, Kipling, and others--and explains through these signature lives how Victorian England started a revolution that still hasn't ended. of illustrations.

Capturing the strength of the British Army from 1815 to 1914, this groundbreaking reference presents the most recent research on the most significant wars, campaigns, battles, and leaders. The Victorians at War*, 1815–1914: An Encyclopedia of British Military History surveys the major wars, campaigns, battles, and expeditions of the British Army as well as its weaponry, tactics, and all other aspects of its operations from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the dawn of World War I. Containing numerous maps depicting various theaters of war, this all-encompassing volume explains why the numerous military operations took place and what the results were. Biographies reveal fascinating facts about British and Indian Army officers and other ranks, while other entries deal with recruitment, training, education and literacy, uniforms, equipment, pay and conditions, social backgrounds of the soldiers, diseases and wounds they fell victim to, and much more. This volume is indispensable to those wanting to gain information about the British Army during this remarkable imperial era.

Juxtaposing the albums of Lady Brassey, an overlooked figure among Victorian women travelers, with Brassey's travel books, Nancy Micklewright takes advantage of a unique opportunity to examine the role of photography in the 1870s and 1880s in constructing ideas about place and empire. This study draws on a range of source material to investigate aspects of the Brassey collection. The book begins with an overview of Lady Brassey's life and projects, as well as an examination of issues relevant to subsequent discussions of the travel literature, the photographs, and the albums in which the photographs are assembled. Lady Brassey is next considered as a traveler and public figure, and the author gives an overview of Brassey's travel literature, placing her in her social and political context. Micklewright then considers the seventy volumes of photographs which comprise the Brassey album collection, taking an especially close look at the eight albums devoted to the Middle East. Analyzing the specific contents and structure of the albums, and the interplay of text and image within, she explores how the Brasseys constructed their presentation of the region. While confirming some earlier work about constructions of the Orient by the British during the time, this book offers a much more detailed and nuanced understanding of how photographic and literary constructions were related to individual experience and identity within a larger British identity. The first appendix explores the illustrative relationship between the photograph albums and Lady Brassey's travel books, yielding an understanding of the processes involved in transferring the photographic image to a printed one, at a particular moment in the development of book illustration. A second appendix lists the contents and named photographers of all seventy albums in the Brassey collection. All in all, Micklewright's study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the complex and unstable socia

The British Army's campaigns in Egypt and the Sudan from 1882 to 1899 were among the most dramatic and hard-fought in British military history. In 1882, the British sent an expeditionary force to Egypt to quell the Arabic Revolt and secure British control of the Suez Canal, its lifeline to India. The enigmatic British Major General Charles G. Gordon was sent to the Sudan in 1884 to study the possibility of evacuating Egyptian garrisons threatened by Muslim fanatics, the dervishes, in the Sudan. While the dervishes defeated the British forces on a number of occasions, the British eventually learned to combat the insurrection and ultimately, largely through superior technology and firepower, vanquished the insurgents in 1898. British Operations in Egypt and the Sudan: A Selected Bibliography enumerates and generally describes and annotates hundreds of contemporary, current, and hard-to-find books, journal articles, government documents, and personal papers on all aspects of British military operations in Egypt and the Sudan from 1882 to 1899. Arranged chronologically and topically, chapters cover the various campaigns, focusing on specific battles, leading military personalities, and the contributions of imperial nations as well as supporting services of the British Army. This definitive volume is an indispensable reference for researching imperialism, colonial history, and British military operations, leadership, and tactics.