The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846-1886.(Review)

The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846-1886, by K. Theodore Hoppen; pp. xviii + 787. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, [pounds]30.00, $45.00.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that, among the crowds who flocked to the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851, there were some who had gathered three years earlier on Kennington Common to demand the People's Charter. The seemingly dramatic transformation--from political protest and social turmoil to economic prosperity and social peace-in the short space between these two events has been a continuing source of fascination to historians. Indeed, there has been an enormous explosion in published work in the sixty years since Sir Llewellyn Woodward and Sir Robert Ensor first dipped their toes into the historical waters of Victorian England on behalf of Oxford University Press. It is now almost impossible for any one individual to read and absorb this huge literature, let alone synthesise it into a comprehensive and manageable narrative. Theodore Hoppen's task, therefore, of writing a "New Oxford History of England" covering the forty …