Victorian Bloomsbury

by Rosemary Ashton

• ISBN13: 9780300154474
• ISBN10: 030015447X
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2012-11-13
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

While Bloomsbury is now associated with Virginia Woolf and her early-twentieth-century circle of writers and artists, the neighborhood was originally the undisputed intellectual quarter of nineteenth-century London. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival resources, Rosemary Ashton brings to life the educational, medical, and social reformists who lived and worked in Victorian Bloomsbury and who led crusades for education, emancipation, and health for all. Ashton explores the secular impetus behind these reforms and the humanitarian and egalitarian character of nineteenth-century Bloomsbury. Thackeray and Dickens jostle with less famous characters like Henry Brougham and Mary Ward. Embracing the high life of the squares, the nonconformity of churches, the parades of shops, schools, hospitals and poor homes, this is a major contribution to the history of nineteenth-century London.

Author Biography

Rosemary Ashton is professor of English language and literature at University College London and the author of many distinguished biographies and cultural histories of the nineteenth century including George Eliot and 142 Strand.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vi
Preface and Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction: Surveying Bloomsbury	p. 1
Godlessness on Gower Street	p. 25
Steam Intellect: Diffusing Useful Knowledge	p. 58
Gower Street Again: Scandals and Schools	p. 82
Bloomsbury Medicine: Letting in the Light	p. 105
The British Museum, Panizzi, and the Whereabouts of Russell Square	p. 131
Towards the Millennium	p. 155
A 'Quasi-Collegiate' Experiment in Gordon Square	p. 183
Educating Women	p. 215
Christian Brotherhood, Co-operation and Working Men and Women	p. 249
Work and Play in Tavistock Place	p. 274
Epilogue	p. 305
Notes	p. 311
Bibliography	p. 347
Index	p. 360
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