Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country

Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court & Country by T.H.S. Escott, author of ‘England, its People, Polity & Pursuits,’ etc., etc.

Two Epochs of Victorian Society Contrasted
The New Wealth
Transformation by Steam
The Aristocracy of Wealth & Its Manifestations
The Rich Men from the East
Social Citizenship as a Moral Growth of Victorian England
The New Era in English Parishes
The New Era in English Counties
County Councils & Class Fusion
The Social Fusing & Organizing of the Two Nations of ‘Sibyl’
From an Untaught Generation to Free Schools
The Ladder of Education
The Great Public Schools as Mirrors of the Age
The New Oxford & Cambridge
From the Old Social Order to the New
‘The Play’s the Thing’
The Stranger Within Our Gates & Our Own Teeming Millions
The House of Commons as a Landmark of Political Progress Under Queen Victoria
Crown, Country & Commons
Royalty as a Social Force
Crown & Sword
From Wooden Walls to Floating Engines
Transformations of Victorian Science
Cecilia’s Triumphs
Transformed & Transforming Art
Popular Culture in the Crucible
Newspaper Press Transformation Scenes
Transformations in Invalid Life
Transformations of Religious Thought
The Queen’s Subjects at Play--Active or Sedentary
The Reign of Law & Its Transformations:--Home & Colonial

It may be well very briefly to explain the relation in which the present work stands to a survey, not a history, of modern England undertaken by the same author some years ago. That earlier work was originally published by Messrs Cassell & Co. in two volumes. It was reprinted, first by them, secondly by Messrs Chapman & Hall, in a single volume. Into that re-issue of his England: Its People, Polity, & Pursuits (the labour of revision being much lightened by the obliging help of Mr Francis Drummond), the author introduced certain references to social or legislative changes effected since the original edition of the work appeared. Without organic disturbance of its plan, & risk of consequent confusion to the reader, it would have been impossible to bring down that book to the year 1897. The writer does not in the following pages pre-suppose any knowledge of his former book on the part of the readers of his present one. He has, however, held himself absolved from the duty of repeating in this book minute accounts of institutions fully described in its predecessor. Such repetition seemed the more undesirable because the earlier book is still in wide circulation here; while it has been translated into several European languages, & has been adopted as a text book in the higher grade State schools of Germany,[1] & of other countries. The method of workmanship adopted in Social Transformations of the Victorian Age is identical with that pursued in the case of England, Etc.

This new book being, like its predecessor, not a history, but a series of different views from a common standpoint, the sketches of national life & character as well as of national institutions at work, have in all cases been made from personal observation; supplemented by the assistance of the highest experts in their different departments to whom the writer had access.