Radical Victorians by James Hobson tells us about a group of Victorians (obvs!) who defied convention in various ways: espousing vegetarianism, teetotalism, cremation, women’s legal equality and many other views that were ahead of their time. The individuals are:
- Anna Kingsford
- Frances Power Cobbe
- Ann Jane Carlile
- Florence Cook
- Sir Henry Thompson
- Isabelle Holmes
- Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy
- Richard Pankhurst
- George Drysdale
- Annie Besant
- Edward Truelove
- Charles Bradlaugh
- Josephine Butler
- W.T. Stead
- Stuart Headlam
- Keir Hardie
- Henry Hyndham
- Sir Charles Dilke
- Francis Dalton
To my shame, I had only heard of five of them and, as I read Hobson’s book, I realised I actually knew very little about those few. This is perhaps not surprising. Hobson has chosen people who change the future but (mostly) didn’t live to see their views accepted. Thus, the book excludes Florence Nightingale and Charles Darwin – their views were radical when first proposed but were fairly mainstream when Queen Victoria died. Francis Dalton was a great scientist but made one huge misjudgement: eugenics. Whilst the basic science may be correct - racehorses can be bred for stamina, potatoes can be bred to resist blight - the moral consequences are shudderingly deplorable. Modern cancel culture is writing him out of history, which is a shame, as he did achieve some great things: the first weather map in a newspaper; breakthroughs in fingerprint technology and statistical methods.
Hobson sets the context for each life, explaining the standard contemporary views and showing how unusual the above team seemed to other Victorians. Many of them had the luxury of wealthy parents and could afford to throw themselves whole-heartedly into fighting for good causes - as Hobson puts it, they were part of “the leisured intellectual elite.” Some, however, like Keir Hardie, the founder of the Independent Labour Party, were desperately poor.
That brings me onto my one cavil with the book. Many - most? All? - of the cast list were known to each other, and they pop up in each other’s chapters. The trouble is, I can’t remember whether, when we read about Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy going to see the work of Josephine Butler, we have read about Butler yet or not! And there are thirty-five mentions of Charles Bradlaugh before we reach the chapter dedicated to him. It’s all good stuff, but the interconnectedness makes it confusing. I know E.M. Forster told us to “Only connect!” but I sometimes wonder if Hobson has taken the instruction to extremes!
The book is well-written and provides a lot of interesting information about each life. It’s not as dry as you might expect. I shall read it again, and I know I’ll get more out of it on a second or third reading.
- Colin
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