His struggle to succeed and his conquest of Henrietta, the spirited daughter of a rich manufacturer, drive a richly woven tale that takes the reader from the dusty plains of India to the teeming slums of nineteenth-century London, from the chaos of the great industrial cities to the age of the peaceful certainties of the English countryside. Filled with epic scenes and memorable characters, God is an Englishman triumphs in its portrayal of human strength and weakness, and in its revelations of the power of love.

    No reading of nineteenth century poetry can be complete without attention to this prolific and popular poet. Rossetti's inner life dominates her poetry, exploring loss and unattainable hope. Her divine poems have a freshness and toughness of thought, while many of her love poems are erotic, and as often express love for women as for men. The varied threads of Rossetti's concerns are drawn together in what is perhaps her greatest poem, the strange and ambiguous Goblin Market.304

    Few of Gaskell's contemporaries were willing to consign her exclusively to the ranks of 'lady novelists', and late Victorian memoirists and critics measured her achievements against those of Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot. The Pickering & Chatto edition of "The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell" is the first comprehensive critical edition of Gaskell's work to be published. It brings together, for the first time, her journalism, some of which has never been republished, her extensive shorter fiction, which was published in various collections during her lifetime, her early personal writing, including a diary written between 1835 and 1838 when she was a young mother, her five full-length novels and "The Life of Charlotte Bronte". The edition is fully reset. Copy texts have been carefully chosen, according to the publishing history of individual works. Textual variants are noted at the end of each volume and individual works are accompanied by a headnote detailing the circumstances of publication, together with full explanatory notes. A general introduction to the edition traces Gaskell's reputation from lifetime reviews of individual works through to late Victorian assessments of her achievement, the waning of her popularity at the end of the nineteenth century and its revival in the middle of last century. Throughout this process the role played by biographies and by the publication of her letters will be emphasised. The introduction also discusses the history of the earlier editions and collections of Gaskell's works and offers a rationale for the organisation of this definitive edition. In addition each volume contains a critical introduction to the text(s) included in the volume.

    Policemen could only stand in awe of the occupations and illegal practices which grew up.Kellow Chesney begins his book by taking a general look at the society and its penal methods. Then, ranging over the whole spectrum of underworld life from travelling showmen and religious fakes to cracksmen, garrotters, and incorrigible pickpockets, he recreates in detail the squalid lives and the 'lays' of those who thronged the rookeries and alleys of Victorian cities. Curious stories emerge from this world of crime and penury, and, throughout, the study highlights the vast substratum of vice feeding on that 'most enlightened age'.

    Brought into being by the same agents of disturbance and change that produced Victorian society at large, the underworld nevertheless has a history with its own distinct character.Calling to mind works of Willkie Collins and Charles Dickens, the overall effect is to make us realize that the truth of the Victorian underworld was stranger and far more horrible than any fictional depiction.

    'She is well worth exploring for the many felicities in her poems and or the perfection of her lyric ear-no other poet but Tennyson had a more flawless sense of sound.' Elizabeth Jennings

    Linking the world of the Regency with the middle of Queen Victoria's reign, he was made Secretary at War in 1809 at the age of twenty-five, and held the post for nineteen years. From 1830 to 1841 he was Foreign Secretary. At first he was regarded as weak and ineffectual, a 'Lord Cupid' who was more active in love affairs than in diplomacy; but before the end of his term of office he had raised English prestige in Europe to a record height. Without any special following in Parliament, he became the most popular statesman in the country, because of his vigorous defence of the rights Englishmen abroad.He played a crucial part in the creation of Belgium, saved Portugal and Spain from complete tyranny, rescued Turkey from Russia and saved the route to India from France. He was again Foreign Secretary from 1846-51, when he was in effect dismissed by Queen Victoria after undertaking to show her his foreign dispatches and then manifestly failing to do so. He would probably have averted the Crimean War if he had been Foreign Secretary at the time; and in 1855, at the age of seventy, he finally became Prime Minister, because the public believed he was the only man who could win the war. With a break of sixteen months, he was Prime Minister until he died in 1865.Palmerston was not greatly concerned with morality. His policy, first, last and all the time, was to protect and strengthen British interests, not least by a policy of brinkmanship that preserved the international balance of power and thus made British nineteenth-century prosperity possible.His personal energy and vitality were phenomenal-at the age of seventy-nine he rode from Piccadilly to Harrow in fifty-five minutes-and his treatment of his fellow men and women, from the humblest clerk in the Foreign Office to Metternich, Napoleon III and Queen Victoria, was consistently robust.