Rating: 
Summary: A Literary Tantrum
Review: Upon purchasing A.N. Wilson's "The Victorians," I hoped it might be an insightful, if somewhat anecdotal, survey of nineteenth century British Society. Unfortunately, this tome serves as the author's pulpit to preach a Marxist interpretation of the period.Wilson repeatedly focuses on the negative aspects of Victorian society while one-sidedly offering the viewpoints of Marx and Engels. This grand age gave the world great inventions, advances in science and medicine, improvements to agriculture and urban planning, free trade, foundations of universal education, modern conveniences, a flourishing of arts and letters, mass transportation, communication and production. Spurred by capitalism, this monumental output, both psychic and material, raised the standard of living for the vast majority of the population and was responsible for the creation o the largest middle class the world had seen to date. Of course workhouses, poverty, and poor working conditions were extant, especially in the first half of the century. But what Wilson fails to see is the general trend towards improvement over the course of time. One can't help but feel Wilson's frustration that the Chartists could not pull off a Bolshevistic revolution in 1848. Oh, and one best not disagree with Marx, as the author warns, "The truth is, as Marx saw very clearly, that there is a genuine difference of interest between the workers and the bourgeoisie. Any dissent from such a view...is a con." Really? Or perhaps, any dissent from entrenched leftwing academic demagoguery is a con. Indignant, Wilson spews forth that "This was a ruthless, grabbing, competitive, male-dominated society, stamping on its victims and discarding its weaker members with all the devastating relentlessness of mutant species in Darwin's vision of Nature itself." At this point in his argument, the author conveniently overlooks the vastly charitable nature of these people. After all, was it not the Victorians who gave us the Red Cross and the Salvation Army? Capitalistic, energetic, creative, the Victorians created a society greater than anything seen before in history. Their thoughts and deeds have far more contributed to, than detracted from, the betterment of society.
Rating: 
Summary: Best taken in small doses
Review: Wilson's book is best taken in small doses, rather like his articles in London's Daily Telegraph. The book is a huge panoramic survey of the years of Victoria's reign (1837-1901). It is mainly chronological and organized around large themes such as art, novelists, poetry, the Empire, politics, social mores. It is a bit of curate's egg (partly good, partly bad). The actual curate's egg cartoon was published in Punch on 9 November 1895, and so the reference is also apposite. The good part is the flavor Wilson brings to the dry facts. He is full of wonderful anecdotes about characters and episodes, usually in parentheticals, which really liven up the broth. He does have an encyclopedic knowledge of victoriana and is not afraid to ladle it out. The bad part is the fact that it is simply not possible to give a coherent semblance of Victorian Britain in just one book, even a thick one. All but the most central characters (like Gladstone or Disraeli) merit at most a couple of pages, and there are so many of them it's hard to keep them all straight, even when one is familiar with the subject. This gives the book a more than passing resemblance to a telephone directory, where one is introduced to a cast a hundreds (or thousands), but few stick in one's mind. Perhaps Wilson should have tried a device such as depicting events around the main members of two significant families, such as Figes did in his great "Natasha's Dance", which allowed him to cover three hundred years of Russian cultural history with a certain modicum of coherence lacking in Wilson's book. Absent a clear organizing scheme, the book is a bit chaotic and not an easy read unless taking in small bites.
Having said this, I enjoyed Wilson's retakes of some personages who were absolutely thrashed by Lytton Strachey in his delightfully bitchy "Eminent Victorians". I particularly liked seeing the mercurial Cardinal Manning shown as an intelligent, visionary man (he was fully aware that the future of the Church lay in supporting democratic politics and taking the side of the poor, and he did it himself by promoting trade unionism and Irish home rule) rather than as the nasty careerist Strachey describes. In all likelihood both Wilson and Strachey are partly correct in their descriptions of the Cardinal, but Wilson's view is more sympathetic.
I didn't much like Wilson's constant apologies about the racial attitudes of the Victorians. Those views were of their time, and there's no need to keep harping on it. Anachronistic smugness is a bit jarring. I believe he should have been stronger in his defense of the positive side of the Empire, which was a greatly civilizing force, and the precedent for the current international law system. The British Victorians, instead of merely expoliating the natives (like the Dutch or the Belgians) did work for their betterment. Men like Messieurs Nehru and Mandela may only be seen as the rightful heirs to the best side of both the native and colonial inheritances.
I would have give the book 3 1/2 stars, but the option is not available.
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