Originally published in 1926, the first part of this book attempted to formulate a theory of ability in the light of recent experimental results of the time. It discusses the nature of intelligence and the problem of special abilities, and includes a study of some typical forms of genius. The second part gives an account of a three years’ experimental study of special abilities in arts and science respectively, carried out upon university students. Samples of the tests employed are included. The results are presented in non-technical form. Victoria Hazlitt was a pioneer of experimental psychology, which was particularly significant as a woman in the early twentieth century. In many cases her work anticipated later developments in psychology by many years. Today it can be enjoyed in its historical context.
Originally published in 1933, this volume was the result of many years’ careful first-hand study of child psychology enriched by the author’s unusually wide experience in dealing with the subject with students. It was intended to follow the development of children from infancy to adolescence, but was cut short due to the author’s untimely death. The book makes available the results of modern experimental work of the time, much of which was published in scattered journals. Chapters deal with the development of sensory and muscular control, including walking and talking, and with the development of the intellectual, emotional and social life of children up to three years of age. A pioneer in the development of experimental psychology Hazlitt’s work can now be enjoyed again in its historical context.
Originally published in 1933, this volume was the result of many years’ careful first-hand study of child psychology enriched by the author’s unusually wide experience in dealing with the subject with students. It was intended to follow the development of children from infancy to adolescence, but was cut short due to the author’s untimely death. The book makes available the results of modern experimental work of the time, much of which was published in scattered journals. Chapters deal with the development of sensory and muscular control, including walking and talking, and with the development of the intellectual, emotional and social life of children up to three years of age. A pioneer in the development of experimental psychology Hazlitt’s work can now be enjoyed again in its historical context.
The concept of eccentricity was central to how people in the nineteenth century understood their world. This monograph is the first scholarly history of eccentricity. Carroll explores how discourses of eccentricity were established to make sense of individuals who did not seem to fit within an increasingly organized social and economic order. She focuses on the self-taught natural philosopher William Martin, the fossilist Thomas Hawkins and the taxidermist Charles Waterton.
Comic Spenser explains how the deep-rooted cultural bias against humour has skewed interpretation of The Faerie Queene since its first publication. As well as bringing a comic perspective to new areas of the poem, this study explores profound connections between humour, faith, and allegory.
Throughout Western history, the societies that have made the greatest contributions to the spread of freedom have created iconic works of art to celebrate their achievements. Yet despite the enduring appeal of these works—from the Parthenon to Michelangelo’s David to Picasso’s Guernica—histories of both art and democracy have ignored this phenomenon. Millions have admired the artworks covered in this book but relatively few know why they were commissioned, what was happening in the culture that produced them, or what they were meant to achieve. Even scholars who have studied them for decades often miss the big picture by viewing them in isolation from a larger story of human striving. David’s Sling places into context ten canonical works of art executed to commemorate the successes of free societies that exerted political and economic influence far beyond what might have been expected of them. Fusing political and art history with a judicious dose of creative reconstruction, Victoria Coates has crafted a lively narrative around each artistic object and the free system that inspired it. This book integrates the themes of creative excellence and political freedom to bring a fresh, new perspective to both. In telling the stories of ten masterpieces, David’s Sling invites reflection on the synergy between liberty and human achievement.
‘Fascinating and compassionate’ Horatio Clare The King of France – thinking he was made of glass – was terrified he might shatter…and he wasn’t alone. After the Emperor met his end at Waterloo, an epidemic of Napoleons piled into France’s asylums. Throughout the nineteenth century, dozens of middle-aged women tried to convince their physicians that they were, in fact, dead. For centuries we’ve dismissed delusions as something for doctors to sort out behind locked doors. But delusions are more than just bizarre quirks – they hold the key to collective anxieties and traumas. In this groundbreaking history, Victoria Shepherd uncovers stories of delusions from medieval times to the present day and implores us to identify reason in apparent madness.
Clark explores the 400 year history of this powerful political ideology from its beginnings among the Puritans of 17th century England to the present-day United States, where Christian Zionists wield unprecedented influence.
This book explores a significant lacuna in British history. Between the 1790s and the 1840s, the concept of psychological androgyny or the unsexed mind emerged as a notion of psychosexual equality, promoted by a small though influential network of heterodox radicals on the margins of Rational Dissent. Deeply concerned with the growing segregation of the sexes, supported seemingly by arbitrary and increasingly binary models of sexual difference, heterodox radicals insisted that while the body might be sexed, the mind was not. They argued that society and the prejudicial masculinist institutions of patriarchy should be reformed to accommodate and protect what one radical described as an ‘infinitely varied humanity’. In placing the concept of psychological androgyny centre stage, this book offers a substantial revision to understandings of progressive debates on gender in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century in Britain.
Exquisite and nuanced in its storytelling, Midnight crafts intimate, humanizing portraits of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Joan of Arc that ask us to behold the women behind the icons. Midnight is a study in the courage of three women—Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Joan of Arc. Jane Austen was poor in 1802, unmarried and homeless. She had outlines, ideas, and first drafts of her future novels but no place to sit and write them. It is at this bleak moment that she receives an offer of marriage from a rich man. Midnight takes us to the hour of her decision between financial security and her writing life. When sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin elopes to France with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she scoffs at the cost—life as an outcast. Together they travel through Europe, reading and writing, but Midnight finds her alone, eight years later, pacing a terrace overlooking the Italian shore, watching for Shelley to sail home over stormy seas in a shaky boat. Joan of Arc, imprisoned in chains, kept her faith for a long year. Be brave, daughter of God, her saints had whispered, you will be saved—and she believes it, until she is taken to be burned at the stake. Midnight is the story of Joan’s final days, between her terrified recantation and her heroic return to the stake.
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