Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

A just measure of pain : the penitentiary in the industrial revolution, 1750-1850Michael Ignatieff

A just measure of pain : the penitentiary in the industrial revolution, 1750-1850

by Michael Ignatieff

Subtitled "The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850", "A Just Measure of Pain" describes the moment in 18th century England when the modern penitentiary and its ambiguous legacy were born. In depicting how the whip, the brand and the gallows - public punishments once meant to cow the unruly poor into passivity - came to be replaced by the "moral management" of the prison and the notion that the... (more)

Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Alone 1932-1940

Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Alone 1932-1940

by William Manchester

The long-awaited second volume of the best Churchill biography reveals the true portrait of this ambitious world leader. Discussion centers on the alarm he sounded about the terrible plot being hatched inside Hitler's deranged mind. Two 8-page photos inserts.

Hell riders : the true story of the charge of the Light Brigade

Hell riders : the true story of the charge of the Light Brigade

by Terry Brighton

On the 150th anniversary of the world's most famous cavalry charge comes a revisionist retelling of the battle based on firsthand accounts from the soldiers who fought there In October 1854, with the Crimean War just under way and British and French troops pushing the tsar's forces back from the Black Sea, seven hundred intrepid English horsemen charged a mile and a half into the most heavily fortified Russian... (more)

Far from the Madding Crowd

by Thomas Hardy

Bathsheba Everdene is a strong, confident woman who becomes a powerful farmer. But her emotional life descends into chaos as she becomes involved with three very different men.

The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Studies in North American Indian History)

The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Studies in North American Indian History)

by Richard White

This book seeks to step outside the simple stories of Indian/white relations--stories of conquest and assimilation and stories of cultural persistence. It is, instead, about a search for accommodation and common meaning. It tells how Europeans and Indians met, regarding each other as alien, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world in the region... (more)

Pax Britannica: Climax of an Empire

by Jan Morris

This centerpiece of the trilogy captures the British at the height of their vigor and self-satisfaction, imposing their traditions and tastes, their idealists and rascals, on diverse peoples of the world. Index. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel

Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel

by Nancy Armstrong

Desire and Domestic Fiction argues that far from being removed from historical events, novels by writers from Richardson to Woolf were themselves agents of the rise of the middle class. Drawing on texts that range from 18th-century female conduct books and contract theory to modern psychoanalytic case histories and theories of reading, Armstrong shows that the emergence of a particular form of female subjectivity... (more)

Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals

Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals

by Christopher Hibbert

This revealing selection from the Queen's papers provides essential clues to her character, tracing her development from shy princess to the formidable and uncompromising grande dame of Europe. How did she feel on hearing that she had become queen? How close was she to her eldest grandchild, who became Kaiser Wilhelm II? Why was she so reluctant to yield the crown to her son and heir, the future King Edward VII?... (more)

Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister

Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister

by Christopher Hibbert

To Thomas Carlyle he was "not worth his weight in cold bacon," but, to Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli was "the kindest Minister" she had ever had and a "dear and devoted friend." In this masterly biography by England's "outstanding popular historian" (A.N. Wilson), Christopher Hibbert reveals the personal life of one of the most fascinating men of the nineteenth century and England's most eccentric Prime... (more)

Disraeli and His World

by Christopher Hibbert

Honourable Company

by John Keay

During 200 years the East India Company grew from a loose association of Elizabethan tradesmen into "the grandest society of merchants in the universe". As a commercial enterprise it came to control half the world's trade and as a political entity it administered an embryonic empire. Without it there would have been no British India and no British Empire. In a tapestry ranging from Southern Africa to north-west... (more)

Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)

Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)

by Linda Colley

In this compelling book, Linda Colley recounts how a new British nation was invented in the wake of the Act of Union between England and Wales and Scotland in 1707. Skillfully interweaving political, military, and social history, Colley enlivens her story with colorful vignettes of the heroes and politicians, artists and writers, and ordinary women and men who helped forge a British national identity. Her book is... (more)

The perfect gentleman: The remarkable life of Dr James Miranda Barry, the woman who served as an officer in the British Army from 1813 to 1859June Rose

The perfect gentleman: The remarkable life of Dr James Miranda Barry, the woman who served as an officer in the British Army from 1813 to 1859

by June Rose

Edward Carpenter and Late Victorian Radicalism

Edward Carpenter and Late Victorian Radicalism

by Tony Brown

The Statesman's Science: History, Nature, And Law In The Political Thought Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Statesman's Science: History, Nature, And Law In The Political Thought Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

by Pamela Edwards

Author of "Kubla Khan" and the epic "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Samuel Taylor Coleridge is remembered principally for his contributions as a romantic poet. This innovative reconsideration of Coleridge's thought and career not only demonstrates his importance as a philosopher but also recovers romanticism as both an aesthetic and a political movement. Pamela Edwards radically departs from classic theories of... (more)

Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790 - 1865

Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790 - 1865

by Richard Carwardine

The focus of this book is on English and American evangelicals during the early and mid-19th century, examining the effect of aggressive conversion techniques used by American evangelicals upon the English revival movement.

The Hour and the Woman: Harriet Martineau's "Somewhat Remarkable" Life

The Hour and the Woman: Harriet Martineau's "Somewhat Remarkable" Life

by Deborah Anna Logan

A British journalist and pioneering reformer, Harriet Martineau reigned at the forefront of debates over social and political issues during the Victorian era. The Hour and the Woman chronicles the "somewhat remarkable" life of one of history's most influential, yet overlooked, women writers. At a time when women were valued primarily for appearance, social class, and marital status, Martineau—plain, poor,... (more)

Francis Galton: Pioneer of Heredity and Biometry

Francis Galton: Pioneer of Heredity and Biometry

by M. G. Bulmer

If not for the work of his half cousin Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory might have met a somewhat different fate. In particular, with no direct evidence of natural selection and no convincing theory of heredity to explain it, Darwin needed a mathematical explanation of variability and heredity. Galton's work in biometry—the application of statistical methods to the biological sciences—laid... (more)

After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 (Library of International Relations)

After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 (Library of International Relations)

by Marika Sherwood

With the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of all slaves throughout the British Empire in 1833, Britain washed its hands of slavery. Not so, according to Marika Sherwood, who sets the record straight in this provocative new book. In fact, Sherwood demonstrates Britain continued to contribute to and profit from the slave trade well after 1807, even into the twentieth century. Drawing on... (more)

Captain Charles Stuart: Anglo-American Abolitionist

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: history-england-19th century

by Michael Ignatieff

by William Manchester

by Terry Brighton

by Thomas Hardy

by Richard White

by Jan Morris

by Nancy Armstrong

by Christopher Hibbert

by Christopher Hibbert

by Christopher Hibbert

by John Keay

by Linda Colley

by June Rose

by Tony Brown

by Pamela Edwards

by Richard Carwardine

by Deborah Anna Logan

by M. G. Bulmer

by Marika Sherwood

by Anthony J. Barker