The Year That Shaped the Victorian Age
Lives, Loves and Letters of 1845

Michael Wheeler is a leading authority on the Victorian age. His exploration of 1845 transforms our understanding of the period.

Michael Wheeler (Author)

9781009268851, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 December 2022

280 pages
22.3 x 14.6 x 3.1 cm, 0.7 kg

'A fascinating and insightful exploration of how open and private letters connected to key events of this calendar year reveal a new way to consider studies of the Victorian era. Wheeler's grasp of the politics, literature, relationships, movements, and questions of 1845 are vastly impressive, and are conveyed to the reader in thematically organized sections that progressively build upon one another. Wheeler skillfully weaves his argument and reflects on previous chapters to highlight connections while transitioning to new analyses to maintain a united purpose: to demonstrate how public and private correspondence of 1845 reveals a society grappling with change, crises, and reform.' Jacqueline H. Harris, Victorian Studies

What was special about 1845 and why does it deserve particular scrutiny? In his much-anticipated new book, one of the leading authorities on the Victorian age argues that this was the critical year in a decade which witnessed revolution on continental Europe, the threat of mass insurrection at home and radical developments in railway transport, communications, religion, literature and the arts. The effects of the new poor law now became visible in the workhouses; a potato blight started in Ireland, heralding the Great Famine; and the Church of England was rocked to its foundations by John Henry Newman's conversion to Roman Catholicism. What Victorian England became was moulded, says Michael Wheeler, in the crucible of 1845. Exploring pivotal correspondence, together with pamphlets, articles and cartoons, the author tells the riveting story of a seismic epoch through the lives, loves and letters of leading contemporaneous figures.

Introduction
Part I. Public Scandals: 1. Opening Mazzini's mail: Sir James Graham and the Post Office
2. The railway juggernaut: Delane, Dickens and the press
3. Poor law bastille: the Andover workhouse scandal
Part II. Private Lives: 4. Love by post: Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
5. Letters from the Continent: Ruskin in Italy
6. Letters of the living and the dead: Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle
Part III. Oxford Movements: 7. Established church in crisis: William George Ward and the Oxford Movement
8. A dangerous correspondence: Newman on the road to Rome
Part IV. Irish Questions: 9. Educating papist priests: Gladstone and the Maynooth grant
10. From our own Commissioner: Daniel O'Connell and The Times
11. A prime minister resigns: Peel and the Corn Laws
Afterword.

Subject Areas: Trains & railways: general interest [WGF], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Diaries, letters & journals [BJ]