eBook

Making English Morals

Roberts, M. J. D.

2004,2009

Overview

Campaigns for moral reform were a recurrent and distinctive feature of public life in later Georgian and Victorian England. Anti-slavery, temperance, charity organisation, cruelty prevention, 'social purity' advocates, and more, all promoted their causes through mobilisation of citizen volunteer support. This 2004 book sets out to explore the world of these volunteer networks, their foci of concern, their patterns of recruitment, their methods of operation and the responses they aroused. In its exploration of this culture of self-consciously altruistic associational effort, the book provides a systematic survey of moral reform movements as a distinct tradition of citizen action over this period, as well as casting light on the formation of a middle-class culture torn, in this stage of economic and political nation-building, between acceptance of a market-organised society and unease about the cultural consequences of doing so. This is a revelatory book that is both compelling and accessible.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: 19th century / England / England -- Moral conditions / England -- Social conditions -- 19th century / History / Moral conditions / Moral development / Moral development -- England -- History -- 19th century / Social conditions / Social ethics / Social ethics -- England -- History -- 19th century / Social movements / Social movements -- England -- History -- 19th century / Social reformers / Social reformers -- England -- History -- 19th century / Voluntarism / Voluntarism -- England -- History -- 19th century
• ISBN: 9780521100144, 9780521833899, 0521100143, 0521833892