Reading Gladstone

by Ruth Clayton Windscheffel

Overview

This interdisciplinary study explores how book culture functioned in the life and milieu of one of the nineteenth century's most complex figures. Spanning the statesman's long life, it presents key case studies illuminating the constant and fundamental interplay between reading, life and politics which characterised Gladstone's world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230007659
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	10/01/2008
Edition description:	2008
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

RUTH CLAYTON WINDSCHEFFEL is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Theology at the University of Oxford. Her research interests lie in the modern history of Britain and its empire, with a particular emphasis on the political, religious, and print cultures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is currently conducting research on the Jezreelites, a late nineteenth-century Southcottian sect, under the auspices of the Faculty of Theology's Prophecy Project. Reading Gladstone is her first book.

Table of Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction PART I: READING THE READER Sacred Dramas: the history of a collection, 1815-1896 Rhythms of Reading PART II: MAKING THE READER The Gentleman's Inheritance, 1809-1836 A Place of Deceptive Tranquillity: Gladstone's Temple of Peace PART III: ST DEINIOL'S Humanity: Libraries, Literature, and Liberalism Divinity: Gladstone, Oxford, and Lux Mundi PART IV: TRANSFORMING THE READER Political Lotus Eater to Grand Old Bookman: re-presenting Gladstone the reader Conclusion References Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

'Reading Gladstone is a sophisticated study, written in a remarkably mature and accessible style...Windscheffel is not only good at reading Gladstone: she also has much to tell us about the Victorian Age and its Church.' - Professor Wheeler, The Church Times

'A splendid study...' - telegraph.co.uk

'Dr Windscheffel deserves to be congratulated on producing one of the most original and thought-provoking books to have appeared on this subject...In this superbly researched book...she has produced a perceptive, sympathetic and brilliant reconstruction of an intimately and yet publicly important dimension of the personality and career of one of the greatest Liberal leaders of all times.' Eugenio Biagini, Journal of Liberal History

'Historians and other scholars of Victorian culture are privileged to be able to benefit from Ruth Clayton Windscheffel's exploration of Gladstone's reading and the world that he created through that reading.' Reviews in History

From the Publisher