Contents

• A parvenu civilisation. The climate of reform. The parvenu accepted. Art and society. Approaching the age
• 1. The Sense of Time and the Uses of History. Time and autobiography. Two versions of Victorian historiography: Carlyle and Macaulay. Usable pasts. Biblical history. Pre- history
• 2. Religion: Reform, Rejection, Reconstruction. Religion in society, 1830-1890. Evangelicalism and the Oxford Movement. Newman and the Church. The crisis of faith. The challenge of modernity: Essays and Reviews and Literature and Dogma. Rejection and return: agnosticism and after
• 3. Science: Re-Imagining the Universe. Victorian science: the social and institutional framework. From geology to evolution. Darwin and Darwinism. The spread of science
• Conclusion: literature and science
• 4. The Life of Ideas and the Culture of Politics. The march of mind: Scotch knowledge and English utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill: the evolution of a Victorian liberal. The culture of politics. Democracy, the state, and socialism. Empire and Utopia. The politics of gender
• 5. The Arts in an Industrial Age. Modern Painters and early Victorian aesthetics. Past and present in Victorian painting: Pre-Raphaelitism and after. Photography. Architecture. Music. The aesthetic resistance