A popular history written by a secondary school headteacher and history teacher with a style that seems targeted at teenagers. To give you a flavour, it describes Lady Hamilton as "the original influencer" and Nelson as "the bravest, most ass-kicking admiral in the entire Royal Navy." It talks about how "to look totally epic dressing like it's 1725."
The bulk of the book consists of twelve mini biographies.
- Anne Bonny and Mary Read
- Bonnie Prince Charlie
- John Wilkes
- Tipu Sultan
- Olaudah Equiano
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- The Ladies of Llangollen
- Lady Hamilton
- Hester Stanhope
- Lord Byron
- Mary Anning
- James Watt
It's an interesting selection, with a careful gender balance, the inclusion of two people of colour, and from the LGBT+ community, although to suggest that Lady Hamilton was the only Georgian who defied the Georgian social hierarchy is naive; Captain James Cook is an obvious counter-example. Most of all, it avoided the obvious people who have been extensively covered. I definitely want to learn more about Hester Stanhope.
It is deliberately populist and a very easy read but inevitably this approach means ignoring some of the nuances and subtleties of a fascinating age. There is a tendency to make over-simplified sweeping statements, such as suggesting that "gothic literature was born that stormy night in Geneva in 1816" with Polidori's The Vampyre and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, ignoring what most see as the start of the genre: Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), The Monk by Matthew Lewis (1796) and the considerable contributions of Mrs Radcliffe, eg A Sicilian Romance (1790). He also overlooks some of the very real disagreements between historians (though it does acknowledge that Olaudah Equiano may have been fictionalising his autobiography when he claimed to have been abducted from Africa, rather than being born a slave).
But this book is a great introduction to an often ignored age.
Selected quotes:
- "Some imagine that the Britain of the past was always a place of polite manners, Sunday church and stiff upper lips. However, this national character was a creation of the Victorian period." (Introduction)
- "Something had changed in British politics during Wilkes's Middlesex election campaign. The common people realised that government should be based on their support, and not their obedience." (John Wilkes)
March 2023; 260 pages
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