Richard D. Altick's Books

Deadly Encounters

Two Victorian Sensations

By: Richard D. Altick

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Deadly Encounters

Two Victorian Sensations

By: Richard D. Altick

In July 1861 London newspapers excitedly reported two violent crimes, both the stuff of sensational fiction. One involved a retired army major, his beautiful mistress and her illegitimate child, blackmail and murder. In the other, a French nobleman was accused of trying to kill his son in order to claim the young man's inheritance. The press covered both cases with thoroughness and enthusiasm, narrating events in a style worthy of a popular novelist, and including lengthy passages of testimony. Not only did they report rumor as well as what seemed to be fact, they speculated about the credibility of witnesses, assessed character, and decided guilt. The public was enthralled. Richard D. Altick demonstrates that these two cases, as they were presented in the British press, set the tone for the Victorian "age of sensation." The fascination with crime, passion, and suspense has a long history, but it was in the 1860s that this fascination became the vogue in England. Altick shows that these crimes provided literary prototypes and authenticated extraordinary passion and incident in fiction with the "shock of actuality." While most sensational melodramas and novels were by lesser writers, authors of the stature of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, and Wilkie Collins were also influenced by the spirit of the age and incorporated sensational elements in their work.

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Page Count

173

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

081220848X

ISBN 13

9780812208481

A Little Bit of Luck

The Making of an Adventurous Scholar

By: Richard D. Altick

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A Little Bit of Luck

The Making of an Adventurous Scholar

By: Richard D. Altick

Richard Altick, the world-renowned scholar, whom the Washington Post says "probably knows more about Victorian Britain than anyone else" has published his memoir. The author of The English Common Reader, The Scholar Adventurers, and The Shows of London, remembers his prolific career with characteristic wit and telling anecdotes.

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Page Count

293

Publisher

Xlibris Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469121220

ISBN 13

9781469121222

The Shows of London

By: Richard Daniel Altick

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The Shows of London

By: Richard Daniel Altick

History of London entertainment from 1600 to the end of the 1850's.

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Page Count

580

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674807316

ISBN 13

9780674807310

Knowledge Is Power

The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865

By: Richard D. Brown

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Knowledge Is Power

The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865

By: Richard D. Brown

Brown here explores America's first communications revolution--the revolution that made printed goods and public oratory widely available and, by means of the steamboat, railroad and telegraph, sharply accelerated the pace at which information travelled. He describes the day-to-day experiences of dozens of men and women, and in the process illuminates the social dimensions of this profound, far-reaching transformation. Brown begins in Massachusetts and Virginia in the early 18th century, when public information was the precious possession of the wealthy, learned, and powerful, who used it to reinforce political order and cultural unity. Employing diaries and letters to trace how information moved through society during seven generations, he explains that by the Civil War era, cultural unity had become a thing of the past. Assisted by advanced technology and an expanding economy, Americans had created a pluralistic information marketplace in which all forms of public communication--print, oratory, and public meetings--were competing for the attention of free men and women. Knowledge is Power provides fresh insights into the foundations of American pluralism and deepens our perspective on the character of public communications in the United States.

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Page Count

385

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0197554997

ISBN 13

9780197554999

The Strength of a People

The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650-1870

By: Richard D. Brown

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The Strength of a People

The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650-1870

By: Richard D. Brown

Thomas Jefferson's conviction that the health of the nation's democracy would depend on the existence of an informed citizenry has been a cornerstone of our political culture since the inception of the American republic. Even today's debates over educatio

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Page Count

280

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807846635

ISBN 13

9780807846636

Writing the Past, Writing the Future

Time and Narrative in Gothic and Sensation Fiction

By: Richard S. Albright

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Writing the Past, Writing the Future

Time and Narrative in Gothic and Sensation Fiction

By: Richard S. Albright

This book links popular British fiction from the 1790s through the 1860s to anxieties about time. The cataclysm of the French Revolution, discoveries in geology, biology, and astronomy that greatly expanded the age and size of the universe, and technological developments such as the railway and the telegraph combined to transform the experience of time and dramatize its aporetic nature--time as inarticulable contradiction.

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Page Count

267

Publisher

University of Delaware Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0980149649

ISBN 13

9780980149647

Victorian People and Ideas

A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature

By: Richard Daniel Altick

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Victorian People and Ideas

A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature

By: Richard Daniel Altick

The reputation of the Victorian age in England has undergone many vicissitude, but it is now higher than ever. In this important new study, Richard D. Altick, moves us toward an understanding of the social, intellectual, and theological crises that Carlyle and Dickens, Tennyson and Arnold were daily struggling to solve. And the issues were many. Altick brings to the discussion of these complicated questions the lively and sensitive intelligence that his many readers have come to expect. He includes contemporary illustrations and a full reference index.

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Page Count

356

Publisher

W. W. Norton

Published Date

ISBN 10

039304260X

ISBN 13

9780393042603

Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media

By: Louise Henson,Geoffrey Cantor,Gowan Dawson,Richard Noakes,Sally Shuttleworth,Jonathan R. Topham

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Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media

By: Louise Henson,Geoffrey Cantor,Gowan Dawson,Richard Noakes,Sally Shuttleworth,Jonathan R. Topham

Written by literary scholars, historians of science, and cultural historians, the twenty-two original essays in this collection explore the intriguing and multifaceted interrelationships between science and culture through the periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging across the spectrum of periodical titles, the six sections comprise: 'Women, Children, and Gender', 'Religious Audiences', 'Naturalizing the Supernatural', 'Contesting New Technologies', 'Professionalization and Journalism', and 'Evolution, Psychology, and Culture'. The essays offer some of the first 'samplings and soundings' from the emergent and richly interdisciplinary field of scholarship on the relations between science and the nineteenth-century media.

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Page Count

475

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351946846

ISBN 13

9781351946841

Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

By: Richard J. Helmstadter

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Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

By: Richard J. Helmstadter

The subject of religious liberty in the nineteenth century has been defined by a liberal narrative that has prevailed since Mill and Macaulay to Trevelyan and Commager, to name only a few philosophers and historians who wrote in English. Underlying this narrative is a noble dream--liberty for every person, guaranteed by democratic states that promote social progress though not interfering with those broadly defined areas of life, including religion, that are properly the preserve of free individuals. At the end of the twentieth century, however, it becomes clear that religious liberty requires a more comprehensive, subtle, and complex definition than the liberal tradition affords, one that confronts such questions as gender, ethnicity, and the distinction between individual and corporate liberty. None of the authors in this volume finds the familiar liberal narrative an adequate interpretive context for understanding his particular subject. Some address the liberal tradition directly and propose modified versions; others approach it implicitly. All revise it, and all revise in ways that echo across the chapters. The topics covered are religious liberty in early America (Nathan O. Hatch), science and religious freedom (Frank M. Turner), the conflicting ideas of religious freedom in early Victorian England (J. P. Ellens), the arguments over theological innovation in the England of the 1860s (R. K. Webb), European Jews and the limits of religious freedom (David C. Itzkowitz), restrictions and controls on the practice of religion in Bismarcks Germany (Ronald J. Ross), the Catholic Church in nineteenth-century Europe (Raymond Grew), religious liberty in France, 1787-1908 (C. T. McIntyre), clericalism and anticlericalism in Chile, 1820-1920 (Simon Collier), and religion and imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain (Jeffrey Cox).

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Page Count

476

Publisher

Stanford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804730873

ISBN 13

9780804730877

Book's by Richard D. Altick

Deadly Encounters

Deadly Encounters

A Little Bit of Luck

A Little Bit of Luck

The Shows of London

The Shows of London

Knowledge Is Power

Knowledge Is Power

The Strength of a People

The Strength of a People

Writing the Past, Writing the Future

Writing the Past, Writing the Future

Victorian People and Ideas

Victorian People and Ideas

Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media

Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media

Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

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