Benjamin Disraeli was the most gifted parliamentarian of the nineteenth century. A superb orator, writer and wit, he twice rose to become Prime Minister, dazzling many with his famous epigrams along the way. But how much do we really know about the man behind the words? How did this bankrupt Jewish school dropout and trashy novelist reach the top of the Victorian Conservative Party? And why does his reputation continue to have such a hold over British politics today? In this engaging reassessment, Douglas Hurd and Edward Young explore the paradoxes at the centre of Disraeli's 'two lives': a dandy and gambler on the one hand, a devoted servant and favourite Prime Minister of the Queen on the other. A passionately ambitious politician, he intrigued and manoeuvred with unmatched skill to get to - in his own words - 'the top of the greasy pole', but he also developed a set of ideas to which he was devoted. His political achievements are never quite what they seem: he despised the idea of a more classless society, he never used the phrase 'One Nation', and although he passed the Second Reform Act he was no believer in democracy. By stripping away the many myths which surround his career, Douglas Hurd and Edward Young bring alive the true genius of Disraeli in this wonderfully entertaining exploration of his life.

This is the captivating story of Charles Stewart Parnell's sister. In the late nineteenth century, before women had the vote, a group of respectable ladies operated outside the law to fight for the rights of the landless poor in Ireland. These women were feared by both the British government and Irish Republicans. They were considered too militant, even by the militants, and because they were women, even the law couldn't stop them. They were the Ladies' Land League, founded in January 1881 by Miss Anna Stewart Parnell. When the male leaders of the original Land League were imprisoned by the British, the Ladies League took over their work. Exploiting loopholes in the law, they soon became more successful than the men, establishing over 400 branches in Ireland. But when Anna started questioning the men's political strategies instead of merely distributing alms, she became a threat to more than the British - she became a threat to the Republican movement itself. There was only one man who could silence her: Her brother, Charles Stewart Parnell. And he did.

This title is the second edition of a successful text by a leading authority in the field which has now been updated and expanded to incorporate the latest research and scholarship. It has been revised and updated throughout in the light of recent research. Jeremy Black is a leading authority on the eighteenth-century and a high profile author.This book provides a thematic overview, covering the whole of the British Isles. Jeremy Black sets the politics of eighteenth century Britain into the fascinating context of social, economic, cultural, religious and scientific developments. The second edition of this successful text by a leading authority in the field has now been updated and expanded to incorporate the latest research and scholarship.

Story of the devastating effects of the Great Famine in Cork Workhouse.

The years between 1603 and 1714 were perhaps the most decisive in English history. During this period modern English society and a modern state began to take shape, and England's position in the world was transformed.

The Century of Revolution tries to penetrate below the familiar events to grasp when happened—to ordinary English men and women as well as to kings and queens or abstractions like "society" and "the state."

In this new edition, Dr. Hill includes the most important conclusions of recent research and has added postscripts drawing attention to especially significant books.

Between 1750 and 1840 ordinary British people abandoned such time-honored forms of protest as collective seizures of grain, the sacking of buildings, public humiliation, and physical abuse in favor of marches, petition drives, public meetings, and other sanctioned routines of social movement politics. The change created - perhaps for the first time anywhere - mass participation in national politics. Charles Tilly is the first to address the depth and significance of the transmutations in popular collective action during this period. As he unravels the story of thousands of popular struggles and their consequences, he illuminates the dynamic relationships among an industrializing, capitalizing, proletarianizing economy; a war-making, growing, increasingly interventionist state; and the internal history of contention that spawned such political entrepreneurs as Francis Place and Henry Hunt. Tilly's research rests on a catalog of more than 8,000 "contentious gatherings" described in British periodicals, plus ample documentation from British archives and historical monographs. The author elucidates four distinct phases in the transformation to mass political participation, and identifies the forms and occasions for collective action that characterized and dominated each. He provides rich descriptions not only of a wide variety of popular protests but also of such influential figures as John Wilkes, Lord George Gordon, William Cobbett, and Daniel O'Connell. This engaging study offers a vivid picture of Great Britain during a pivotal era.

This ground-breaking biography of Bishop Francis Hutchinson (1669-1739) provides a detailed and rare portrait of an early eighteenth century Irish bishop and witchcraft theorist. Drawing upon a wealth of printed primary source material, the book aims to increase our understanding of the eighteenth-century established clergy, both in England and Ireland. It illustrates how one of the main skeptical texts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the "Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft" (1718), was constructed and how it fit into the wider intellectual and literary context of the time, examining Hutchinson's views on contemporary debates concerning modern prophecy and miracles, demonic and Satanic intervention, the nature of Angels and hell, and astrology.

This book will be of particular interest to academics and students in the areas of history of witchcraft, and the religious, political and social history of Britain and Ireland in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

This book will provide a ground-breaking introduction to the history of poverty and welfare in modern Ireland in the era of the Irish poor law. As the first study to address poor relief and health care together, this book will fill an important gap in the existing literature providing a much-needed introduction to, and assessment of, the evolution of social welfare in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ireland. The collection also addresses a number of related issues, including private philanthropy, the attitudes of landowners towards poor relief and the crisis of the poor law during the Great Famine of 1845-50. Together this interlinking set of contributions will both survey current research and suggest new areas for investigation thus it is hoped, proving a further stimulus to the growing field of Irish welfare history.

For two generations following the overthrow of the absolutist monarchy in France in 1789, European history was punctuated by political upheavals until in 1848 the continent was swept by revolutionary fervour. Britain alone of the major western powers seemed exempt. Why was this? The governing class at the time attributed it to divine providence and the soundness of a constitution already perfected by revolution in 1688. For a century, historians echoed this Victorian complacency about the superiority of the British and dismissed revolutionary outbursts as mere economic protest or the work of trouble-makers. Extensive evidence for revolutionary plotting was dismissed as the product of the fevered imaginations of government spies. This book builds on scholarship, which has challenged this view, and asks the reader to suspend hindsight and take seriously the threat of revolution, from the English Jacobins of the 1790s and the Luddites of 1812 to the Chartists of 1839-48. If the threat was real, the assertion that "Britain was different" ceases to be adequate, so the final section probes more deeply, drawing on recent research to show how the revolutionaries were defeated by the government's propaganda against revolutionary sentiments and the strength of popular conservatism.

A revolution in gender relations occurred in London around 1700, resulting in a sexual system that endured in many aspects until the sexual revolution of the 1960s. For the first time in European history, there emerged three genders: men, women, and a third gender of adult effeminate sodomites, or homosexuals. This third gender had radical consequences for the sexual lives of most men and women since it promoted an opposing ideal of exclusive heterosexuality.
In "Sex and the Gender Revolution," Randolph Trumbach reconstructs the worlds of eighteenth-century prostitution, illegitimacy, sexual violence, and adultery. In those worlds the majority of men became heterosexuals by avoiding sodomy and sodomite behavior.
As men defined themselves more and more as heterosexuals, women generally experienced the new male heterosexuality as its victims. But women--as prostitutes, seduced servants, remarrying widows, and adulterous wives-- also pursued passion. The seamy sexual underworld of extramarital behavior was central not only to the sexual lives of men and women, but to the very existence of marriage, the family, domesticity, and romantic love. London emerges as not only a geographical site but as an actor in its own right, mapping out domains where patriarchy, heterosexuality, domesticity, and female resistance take vivid form in our imaginations and senses.
As comprehensive and authoritative as it is eloquent and provocative, this book will become an indispensable study for social and cultural historians and delightful reading for anyone interested in taking a close look at sex and gender in eighteenth-century London.

This book challenges much conventional wisdom and provides readers with many new insights into Scottish social and economic history. Christopher A. Whatley argues that the Union of 1707 was vital for Scottish success, but in ways which have hitherto been overlooked. He proposes that the central place of Jacobitism in the historiography of the period should be revised. Comprehensive in its coverage, the book is based not only on an exhaustive reading of secondary material but also incorporates a wealth of new evidence from previously little-used or unused primary sources.

This book offers a major reassessment of the place of propertied people in eighteenth-century England. Common views of politics in this period postulate aristocratic dominance coexisting with plebeian vitality. Paul Langford explores the terrain which lay between the high ground of elite rule and the low ground of popular politics, revealing the vigorous activity and institutional creativity which prevailed in it. Dr Langford shows us a society in which middle-class men and women increasingly enforced their social priorities, vested interests, and ideological preoccupations. In an age imbued with the propertied mentality, the machinery, formal and informal, for managing public affairs was constantly revised. Political and religious prejudices are shown in retreat before the requirements of propertied association. Parliament appears as the willing tool of interests and communities which were by no means submissive to the traditional authority of the gentry. The nobility is seen obediently adapting to the demands of those whom it sought to patronize. This perceptive study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century society and politics.