Splendidly Victorian: Essays in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century British History in Honour of Walter L. Arnstein

The eminent historian of Victorian Britain, Walter L. Arnstein has, over the course of a career spanning more than 40 years, arguably introduced more students to British history than any other American historian. This collection of essays by some of his former students celebrates Arnstein's inspirational teaching and writing with surveys and analyses of various aspects of the social, cultural, economic and political history of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain.Nineteenth-century topics covered in the volume include early Victorian caricatures and the thin legal lines that they often trod; British Army fashion and its contribution to Royal spectacles; Free Trade Radicals and how they viewed educational reform and moral progress; the persistence of Chartist ideology following the failure of the movement in 1848; Disraeli and Derby's involvement with the Navy's administration; religious periodicals and their influence; the myth of Bismarck as an honest broker of peace and the subsequent collapse of the myth as a later source of enmity in Anglo-German relations; the powerful mystique evoked back in England by the London missionary societies Mongolian; missions; Victorian urban planning and the re-introduction of the market place.Two essays on aspects of twentieth-century British history complete the book: the first surveys the ways in which cinemas and their managers helped to curb domestic unrest during the 1930s Depression; the second draws on oral history evidence to explore mid-twentieth century changes in the working class management of health. The book also includes a bibliography of Walter L. Arnstein's work.