Readings

Walter Willcox and Walter Arnstein, The Age of Aristocracy, 1688-1830 (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) (textbook).

Walter Arnstein, Britain Yesterday and Today, 1830 to the Present (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) (textbook).

This eighth edition of this best-selling series provides unparalleled, balanced, and up-to-date coverage of the history of England. Each volume in the series A History of England has been revised to incorporate the latest important scholarship, including a fuller discussion of women's history. With its recognition of the significance of political as well as social institutions and its emphasis on the lives of multidimensional individuals, this series presents political and economic history with social and cultural history woven throughout. Through a lively and comprehensive narrative, the four volumes tell the story of how a small and insignificant outpost of the Roman Empire evolved into a nation that has probably produced and disseminated more ideas and institutions than any other state since Athens. The story is brought up to the present with analysis of England as it entered the twenty-first century.

Enhanced by maps, illustrations, footnotes that incorporate historiographical discussions and an extensive bibliography that have been revised in the light of recent scholarship, this series is a complete resource for courses on the history of England.

We are using the last two volumes in the series, The Age of Aristocracy and Britain Yesterday and Today as our textbooks for this course.

Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, ed. Stephen Coote (Penguin Viking Press, 1982).

Comic dramatist, poet and reviewer, Oliver Goldsmith wrote one novel, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), now acknowledged as his finest work.

The story opens in the country parsonage of Dr. Primrose, a kindly man who has a good heart, a good family and a good income. Suddenly, his idyllic life is cruelly devastated by a series of misfortunes and he ends up in jail. Yet despite all this calamity and injustice, the vicar never loses sight of Christian morality, and while this conviction lends him a genuine nobility, in the end it also brings justice and the restoration of his family and fortune.

Through this simple, almost fairy-tale plot, Goldsmith gives us a charming comedy; not a novel of sentiment, but an artful send-up of many of the familiar literary conventions of his day: the pastoral scene, the artificial romance, the unquestioning stoic bravery of the hero—all culminating, of course, in a gloriously improbable denouement.

Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution, ed. Paul Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Walter Bagehot was one of the great political journalists of his—or indeed of any—age. Written in 1867, The English Constitution remains the best account of the history and working of the British political system. Blending wit, humour, history, and anecdote, its analysis of the monarchy, the role of the prime minister and cabinet, and comparisons with the American presidential system are astute and timeless. It is a study of the classical period of cabinet government before the extension of the suffrage, the creation of the party machines, and the emergence of an independent civil service administering a vast welfare state.

This is a new and highly accessible rendition of one of the classics of English political writing. Paul Smith presents the text of the first (1867) edition of Bagehot's The English Constitution, together with the original conclusion, as well as Bagehot's long introduction to the second edition of 1872. All the usual student-friendly features of the Cambridge Texts series are present, including a concise explanatory introduction, select bibliography and brief biographies of key figures, as well as annotation designed to explain to modern readers some of Bagehot's more arcane contemporary allusions.

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (Harvest Books, 1973).

In the 1930s, George Orwell was sent by a socialist book club to investigate the appalling mass unemployment in the industrial north of England. He went beyond his assignment to investigate the employed as well. Not one to observe from the sidelines, Orwell shared the experiences of the coal miners, living in foul lodgings, subsisting on a meager diet, and going down into the hellish, back-breaking mines. What he saw and recorded helped clarify his feelings about socialism. In this book, he pointedly tells why socialism, the only remedy to the shocking conditions he had witnessed, repelled "so many normal decent people."

Among many accomplishments, Orwell served with the Imperial Police in Burma, fought with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and was a member of the Home Guard and a writer for the BBC during World War II. He gained fame with his two major works of fiction, Animal Farm and 1984.

Coursepack

The Bill of Rights ("An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown") (1689) from English Historical Documents, 1660-1714, vol. 8, ed. Andrew Browning (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953), pp. 122-128.

The Act of Settlement ("An Act for the Further Limitation of the Crown and Better Securing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject") (1701) from English Historical Documents, 1660-1714, vol. 8, ed. Andrew Browning (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953), pp. 129-135.

The Act of Union with Scotland ("An Act for an Union of the Two Kingdoms of England and Scotland") (1707) from English Historical Documents, 1660-1714, vol. 8, ed. Andrew Browning (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953), pp. 680-695.

Gregory King, "Natural and Political Observations" (1696) from Great Britain: The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 1, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: Chelsea House, 1983), p. 105-111.

Excerpts from Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son (1751-1752) from Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son, vol. 2, ed. Oliver Leigh (Washington, DC: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), pp. 15-19, 29-32, 133-139.

Daniel Defoe on the Wealthy Trading Class (1726) from English Historical Documents, 1714-1783, vol. 10, ed. D.B Horn and Mary Ransome (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957), pp. 524-527.

David Davies, "The Case of Laborers in Husbandry" (1795) from The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in British History, vol. 2, ed. Walter Arnstein (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1993), p. 34-36.

Paris Manifesto of Prince Charles Stuart (1745) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 1, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 232-234.

Articles of Capitulation for Montreal between Major General Amherst, Commander of His Britannic Majesty's Troops and Forces in North America . . . and the Marquis of Vaudreuil, Governor and Lieutenant-General for the King of France in Canada (1760) from Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1759-1791, ed. Adam Shortt and Arthur Doughty (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1907), pp. 21-29.

Excerpts from John Malcom, "An Assessment of the Annexations [in India]" (1823) from The Politics of the British Annexation of India 1757-1857, ed. Michael Fisher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 50-58.

Declaration of Independence (1776) from The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in British History, vol. 2, ed. Walter Arnstein (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1993), pp. 106-108.

Excerpts from Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776) from http://www.thomas-paine.com/tpnha/archive/commonsense.html

John Wilkes' Motion for "A Just and Equal Representation of the People of England in Parliament" (1776) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 1, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp.488-495.

John Welsey, "A Plain Account of the People Called Methodists" (1748) from Selections from the Writings of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. Herbert Welch (Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham, 1901), pp. 93-102.

John Wesley, "The Character of a Methodist" (1742) from Selections from the Writings of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. Herbert Welch (Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham, 1901), pp. 213-217.

Edmund Gisbon (Bishop of London), "A Criticism of the Methodists" (ca. 1740) from English Historical Documents, 1714-1783, vol. 10, ed. D.B Horn and Mary Ransome (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957), pp. 389-390.

Excerpts from Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) from Great Political Thinkers: Plato to the Present, ed. William Ebenstein (San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969), pp. 483-504.

Excerpts from "Revolutions without Bloodshed, or Reformation Preferable to Revolt" (1794) from British Working Class Movements, ed. G.D.H. Cole and A.W. Filson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), pp. 48-52.

Henry Grattan, Speech Moving a Declaration of Irish Right (1780) from Select British Eloquence: Embracing the best speeches entire, of the most eminent Orators of Great Britain for the last two centuries, ed. Chauncey Goodrich (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1864), pp. 386-391.

Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland (1800) from Great Britain: Foreign Policy and the Span of Empire, vol. 2, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1972), pp. 1518-1526.

Thomas Creevey's Account of Wellington after Waterloo (1822) from The Creevey Papers: A Selection from the Correspondence & Diaries of the Late Thomas Creevey, M.P., ed. Sir Herbert Maxwell (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1904), pp. 231-239.

James Wilson, "The First Half of the Nineteenth Century: Progress of the Nation and the Race" (1851) from The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in British History, vol. 2, ed. Walter Arnstein (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1993), pp. 164-168.

Samuel Smiles, "Men of Business" from Self-Help (1859) (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), pp. 168-179.

Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Classes in England (1844) (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), pp. 85-93.

George Sturt, "Prices" from The Wheelwright's Shop (1923) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 197-203.

Evidence Given before the Sadler Committee on Child Labour (1832) from http://landlow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/history/workers1.html

Excerpt from John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), pp. 1-14.

Lord John Russell on the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828) from English Historical Documents, 1783-1832, vol. 11, ed. A. Aspinall and E. Anthony Smith (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1959), pp. 671-673.

The Bishop of Armagh Opposes Catholic Emancipation (1829) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 1, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 1009-1014.

The Commons Debate on the First Reform Bill: Lord John Russell, T.B. Macaulay, and Sir Robert Peel (1832) from The Emergence of British Parliamentary Democracy in the Nineteenth Century: The Passing of the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884-5, ed. James Conacher (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1971), pp. 18-33.

Sir Robert Peel, The Tamworth Manifesto (1834) from http://landlow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/history/tamworth2.html

Daniel O'Connell, Speech at Tara (1843) from Modern British Eloquence, ed. David Strother (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969), pp. 198-205.

The Corn Laws: Two Rival Petitions and Richard Cobden on the Food Tax (1841) from The Age of Peel, ed. Norman Gash (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968), pp. 107-112.

Address of the National Anti-Corn Law League Council (1843) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 2, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 1196-1199.

The Six Points of the People's Charter (1837) from British Working Class Movements, ed. G.D.H. Cole and A. W. Filson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), pp. 352-353.

The Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League (1842) from British Working Class Movements, ed. G.D.H. Cole and A.W. Filson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), pp. 389-390.

Speech by Thomas Attwood Presenting the Chartist National Petition to the House of Commons (1839) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 2, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 1111-1115.

Excerpts from the Religious Census of 1851 from The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in British History, vol. 2, ed. Walter Arnstein (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1993), pp. 200-203.

Charles Darwin on Religious Belief (1876) from Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958), pp. 85-96.

The Quarterly Review Attacks the Religious Implications of Darwin's Origin of Species (1860) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 2, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 2057-2062.

William Gladstone Favors Lowering the Borough Franchise (1864) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 2, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 1924-1927.

Robert Lowe Presents the Case against Democracy (1867) from The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in British History, vol. 2, ed. Walter Arnstein (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1993), pp. 233-236.

Benjamin Disraeli "Conservative and Liberal Principles" (1872) from Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, ed. T.E. Kebbel (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1882), pp. 523-535.

Lord Palmerston Describes His Vision of Social Mobility (1865) from Geoffrey Best, Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-1875 (New York: Schoken Books, 1972), pp. 234-236.

Excerpt from Thomas Hay Sweet Escott, England: Her People, Polity, and Pursuits (1880) from Victorian Culture and Society, ed. Eugene Black (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973), pp. 270-278.

Excerpts from Two Speeches by Charles Stewart Parnell on Irish Home Rule (1885) from Irish Historical Documents 1172-1922, ed. Edmund Curtis and R.B. McDowell (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1968), pp. 282-287.

William Gladstone Moves the First Government of Ireland Bill (Home Rule Bill) (1886) from Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. 304, cols. 1036-1046, 1048-1062, 1079-1082.

Joseph Chamberlain on "The True Conception of Empire" (1897) from Great Britain: Foreign Policy and the Span of Empire, vol. 3, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1972), pp. 2518-2521.

Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden" (1899) from http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p1/whiteman.html

Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional" (1897) from http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p2/recessional.html

Excerpts from Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (1843) (New York: A.L. Burt, 1902), pp. 32-36, 173-179, 316-323.

Excerpt from Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London (1902) from Charles Booth on the City: Physical Pattern and Social Structure, ed. Harold Pfautz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 173-179.

Excerpt from Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London (1902) from Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London, Final Volume (New York: AMS Press, 1970), pp. 200-215.

Excerpt from William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890) (London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1890), pp. 85-89, v-ix.

Joseph Chamberlain and Frank Harris, "The Housing of the Poor in Towns" from The Radical Programme (1885), ed. D. A. Hamer Brighton: Harvester Press, 1971), pp. 77-81, 86-91.

Manifesto of the Fabian Society (1884) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 3, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 2611-2612.

Excerpt from Rider Haggard, Rural England (1902) from Into Unknown England, 1866-1913: Selections from the Social Explorers, ed. Peter Keating (Oxford: Manchester University Press, 1976), pp. 216-222.

Balance of Payments and Export of Capital by Quinquennial Averages, 1875 to 1914 from English Historical Documents, 1874-1914, vol. 12 (2), ed. W.D. Handcock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 195.

Joseph Chamberlain Initiates the Imperial Preference Campaign at Glasgow (1903) from The Times, October 7, 1903, pp. 4-5.

David Lloyd George Defends the "People's Budget" (1910) from David Lloyd George, Better Times (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 255-265.

"Why Women Want the Vote": Pamphlet Issued by the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) (1903) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 3, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 2433-2434.

Emmeline Pankhurst's Portman Rooms Speech (1908) from Speeches and Trials of the Militant Suffragettes: The Women's Social and Political Union, 1903-1918, ed. Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 1999), pp. 34-41.

Emmeline Pankhurst's Hartford Speech (1913) from Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, ed. Miriam Schneir (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), pp. 297-304.

Excerpt from Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That (1929) from The Norton Book of War, ed. Paul Fussell (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), pp. 88-99.

The Ulster Covenant (1912) from English Historical Documents, 1874-1914, vol. 12 (2), ed. W.D. Handcock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 335.

Edward Carson Opposes Irish Home Rule (1914) from Great Irish Voices: Over 400 Years of Irish Oratory, ed. Gerard Reid (Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 1999), pp. 245-249.

Proclamation of an Irish Republic during the Easter Rebellion (1916) from Great Irish Voices: Over 400 Years of Irish Oratory, ed. Gerard Reid (Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 1999), pp. 45-46.

Irish Free State Act (1922) from Great Britain: Foreign Policy and the Span of Empire, vol. 2, ed. Joel Wiener, (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1972), pp. 1910-1914.

Eamon de Valera Opposes the Treaty with Britain (1921) from Great Irish Voices: Over 400 Years of Irish Oratory, ed. Gerard Reid (Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 1999), pp. 72-78.

Excerpt from Clement Attlee, The Labour Party in Perspective (1937) from Great Political Thinkers: Plato to the Present, ed. William Ebenstein (San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969), pp. 786-796.

Excerpt from the Beveridge Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services, "Introduction and Summary" (1942) from Great Britain, The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy 1689-1973, vol. 4, ed. Joel Wiener (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1974), pp. 3425-3435.

Excerpt from the Beveridge Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services, "Assumptions, Methods, and Principles" (1942) from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1942beveridge.html

Excerpts from Mahatma Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (1909) from The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1, ed. Raghavan Iyer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 207-209, 212-214, 220-224, 226, 231-234, 244-251, 256-259, 264-265.

Harold MacMillan's "Wind of Change" Speech (1960) from Harold MacMillan, Pointing the Way, 1959-1961 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 473-482.

Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" Speech (1968) from The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell, ed. Rex Collings (London: Bellew Publishing, 1991), pp. 373-379.

Prime Minister Terence O'Neill Attempts to Calm Northern Ireland (1968) from Great Irish Voices: Over 400 Years of Irish Oratory, ed. Gerard Reid (Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 1999), pp. 273-277.

Margaret Thatcher's Speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool (1975) from The Collected Speeches of Margaret Thatcher, ed. Robin Harris (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), pp. 29-38.

Tony Blair's Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Brighton (2001) from http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=97265

Copyrighted by Hugh Dubrulle, 2002
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