The Making of Victorian Values: Decency and Dissent in Britain

The Victorians are remembered for their propriety and stolid middle-class manners—in sharp contrast to the libertine spirit of Byron, Shelley, and the Romantics of the generation just prior. In The Making of Victorian Values, Ben Wilson—only in his twenties but already hailed in Britain as heir to the great radical historians of the twentieth century—offers a brilliant and provocative portrayal of how rebels and dissenters were quashed by authoritarians and imperialists and how mindless materialism and capitalism rolled over them all. In so doing, Wilson's eloquently written account also illuminates the startling parallels between the pre- Victorian era and our own.