Dominion
The History of England Volume V
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
Uncover the intricate past of England in Peter Ackroyd's acclaimed volume, Dominion, a crucial part of his sweeping History of England series. This charismatic narrative opens with the aftermath of Waterloo in 1815 and concludes with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.
Ackroyd masterfully recounts the era of George IV, whose rule witnessed staunch resistance to reform, and that of 'Sailor King' William IV, an epoch which marked significant modernisation and the abolition of slavery.
When eighteen-year-old Queen Victoria's took the throne, a period of astonishing technological breakthroughs and innovation – such as steam railways and the telegraph. Yet, beneath the progress, Ackroyd unflinchingly reveals the harsh reality of the ordinary working classes mired in poverty whilst the industrial revolution flourishes around them.
It was a time that saw a flowering of great literature, too. As the Georgian era gave way to that of Victoria, readers could delight not only in the work of Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth but also the great nineteenth-century novelists: the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell, Thackeray, and, of course, Dickens, whose work has become synonymous with Victorian England.
Finally, Ackroyd illustrates the British Empire's global expansion, reflecting Britannia's iron rule over the waves, the shockwaves of which are still felt today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This fast-paced fifth volume of a popular history of England by Ackroyd a novelist, broadcaster, biographer, and poet covers 1815 1901, a time dominated by the long reign of Queen Victoria (1837 1901), characterized by the growth of the British Empire, and marked by such socioeconomically transformative inventions as the steam engine, railroad, and telegraph. The industrial revolution brought to England both economic dominance and brutal factory life children as young as nine were allowed to work 12 hours a day in cotton factories, for example. The period also saw three reform acts expanding the franchise for British men to about 60% of the male population. Ackroyd devotes much of his best chapter to the one major English war in Europe during this period, that in Crimea against Russia in the 1850s. He sometimes captures the zeitgeist by quoting literary works, as when he notes that Oscar Wilde's 1891 essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" railed against what Wilde called the "stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism" of fin de si cle English life. However, with the exception of a passage on the pioneering geologist and paleontologist Mary Anning, Ackroyd largely ignores the lives and achievements of non-royal English women and how the Irish potato famine of the 1840s affected English life. These omissions aside, this is an informative and lively look at early modern England.
