Kirjahaku

Though for well over a century the novels of R.S. Surtees have maintained a steady readership, his books have been comparatively neglected in the literary and social studies of his period. Norman Gash's stimulating book is both a contribution to Surtees studies and to Victorian social history. It has often been observed that Surtees' fiction furnishes a wealth of material for social historians, and Professor Gash sets out to exploit the opportunities it offers. He places Surtees' novels in their historical context, and uses the novels and other writings to enlarge the historical evidence. Through the views of an unorthodox and sceptical early Victorian novelist, Norman Gash examines a familiar landscape from an unfamiliar angle, illuminating the conservative world of the countryside, small provincial towns, and the seedier side of London. This is a scholarly and entertaining study by an eminent historian of the nineteenth century.

The author, taking as his theme a J. S. Mill statement that `their lot was cast in the 10 years of inevitable reaction,' analyzes political developments after the Reform Act of 1832 as they affected the monarchy, the House of Lords, the established Church, and the two major political parties.

Norman Gash's magnificent two-volume life of Sir Robert Peel - Mr Secretary Peel (1961) and Sir Robert Peel (1972) - is the standard work on the great statesman, and is widely considered one of the great biographies of 19th-century prime ministers. Faber Finds is delighted to return both to print, beginning with Mr Secretary Peel. As Gash puts it memorably, 'Peel, born in 1788 in the world of Gibbon and Joshua Reynolds, of stage-coaches, highwaymen and the judicial burning of women, died in 1850 in the age of Faraday and Darwin, of Punch, railway excursions, trade unions and income tax...' Over the course of Peel's life Britain was remodeled, and it may be argued that Peel himself did more than any other political figure in reconciling the new forces in society with its older institutions. But as a politician Peel could be a controversial figure, his pragmatism pressing him into unpopular decisions. The son of an industrial millionaire, his instincts were for the cause of good government over narrow party interest. Norman Gash interpreted Peel as the intellectual founder of the modern Conservative Party - an aristocratic administrator and natural consensus politician who believed in courting the urban middle class as well as landowners and farmers. Mr Secretary Peel carries its subject's story from birth through his entry into politics in Ireland, his early positions in Tory governments, his tenure as Home Secretary from 1822 (which included his establishing of the Metropolitan Police Force) and up to the struggles over the issue of Catholic Emancipation. 'A rich and perceptive portrait of a statesman in the making,' Philip Ziegler, Telegraph.

Norman Gash's magnificent two-volume life of Sir Robert Peel - Mr Secretary Peel (1961) and Sir Robert Peel (1972) - is the standard work on the great statesman, and is widely considered one of the great biographies of nineteenth-century prime ministers. Faber Finds is delighted to return both to print. In this second volume, Gash focuses on the years between 1830 and 1850, the height of Peel's political career, which included his two terms as prime minister, the controversial repeal of the Corn Laws, and his reform of the Conservative Party. 'In ... his masterly biography, covering Peel's career from the Reform Crisis to his untimely death in 1850, Professor Gash shows himself not merely an admirer but an emulator - brilliant intellect, master of detail, man of conservative but humane conscience.' Harold Perkin, Guardian 'Norman Gash's Sir Robert Peel shows how high and austere academic writing about a major figure is compatible with an outstanding general biography.' Roy Jenkins, Observer 'In Mr Secretary Peel, the first volume of this biography, he provided a rich and perceptive portrait of a statesman in the making. Now at last he has completed one of the great biographies of our time.' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 'Sir Robert Peel by Norman Gash ranks with the great political biographies of the past, a classic work in both scholarship and presentation.' A. J. P. Taylor, New Statesman

'It is a melancholy thought that as soon as reforms are put into practice, disillusionment enters the political scene...' Norman Gash's Ford Lectures, originally delivered at Oxford in 1964, address an era of reform that followed the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and the Reform Act of 1832. The history of this period has often focused on the conflicts that proved necessary before the Acts came to pass. But it was only after 1832 that the real crisis of reform emerged: the clash between what had actually been done, and what men thought should be the consequences of what had been done. As Gash notes of the arguments over the Reform Bill of 1831, "substantially the foundations for the Victorian two-party system were laid by the divisions of politicians into Reformers and Conservatives."

'He gave his name to the longest, and one of the most important, British administrations of the nineteenth century. Yet the man himself has remained a shadowy figure.' Norman Gash, from the introductionPrime Minister at the time of the battle of Waterloo, Robert Banks Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, was in power from 1812 to 1827. But despite his seeing off the threat of Napoleon, and being British premier during the turbulent years of Peterloo, the Six Acts and the campaign for Catholic Emancipation, Lord Liverpool was later dubbed the 'Arch-Mediocrity' by Disraeli, and was generally forgotten, eclipsed by the events of his day. This biography, first published in 1984, brings both the man and his politics out of the shadows.

Politics in the Age of Peel, first published in 1953, is concerned with the ordinary working world of politicians in England during the stormy period between 1830 and 1850: the age of the railway, the Chartists, the Anti-Corn Law League and the Irish famine. Even in the wake of the Great Reform Act of 1832 many corrupt aspects of the old unreformed system of democratic election survived; and politicians had to meet national problems in the teeth of newly clamorous public opinion, while remaining hostage to the representative structure that defined (and limited) their powers.Norman Gash made his professional reputation with this brilliant work, hailed in an unsigned TLS review - which was known to have been written by Sir Lewis Namier - as worthy of 'the warmest acclamation'.