Gladstone
Subtitle: a biography
By: Roy Jenkins.
Edition: 1st U.S. ed.
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 698
ISBN-13: 9780679451440
Subjects: Gladstone, W. E. 1809-1898; Liberal Party (Great Britain) -- Biography; Prime ministers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
Description: William Ewart Gladstone was, perhaps with no one other than Tennyson, Newman, Dickens, Carlyle, and Darwin, one of the stars of nineteenth-century British life. In this award-winning biography, Roy Jenkins brings Gladstone and his century vibrantly to life.

Born in Liverpool in 1809, Gladstone lived until 1898, spending sixty-three of his eighty-nine years in the House of Commons. He served for twenty-seven years in the Cabinet, and was Prime Minister four times, a unique accomplishment.

From his early career as a Conservative and then a Peelite, through his important role in the formation of the Liberal Party to his late preoccupation with the cause of Irish Home Rule, he was a commanding politician and became a statesman greater even than Peel and a Parliamentarian greater even than Disraeli.

Gladstone has been perhaps the most complex individual ever to be Prime Minister. He was a classical scholar, a wide-ranging author, and a participant in all the great theological and liturgical debates of the day, claiming that religion was always more important to him than politics. Gladstone read over twenty thousand books and, when not suffering one of his frequent bouts of illness, walked great distances and chopped down trees for recreation.

But he was also, as his seventy years of succinct diaries show, a man obsessed with terrible feelings of his own sinfulness, prone to self-flagellation and an often misunderstood practice of accosting prostitutes and attempting to persuade them of the errors of their ways.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Originally published: London : Macmillan, 1995. With forenote to the American ed.
Table of contents: title: Forenote to the American edition; title: Part one : A talented and tortured young man 1809-1852.; title: A Liverpool gentleman?; title: A grand tour ending at Newark; title: A clumsy suitor; title: Peel's apprentice; title: Orator, zealot and debtor; title: Mid-century frenzy; title: Ladies of the night; title: The tremendous projectile; title: Part two : A middle-aged mid-Victorian statesman 1852-1868.; title: The Chancellor who made the job; title: The decline and fall of the Aberdeen Coalition; title: Health and wealth A short Odyssey for a British Ulysses; title: The hostile partnership with Palmerston; title: God's vicar in the treasury; title: The people's William; title: Disraeli's foil; title: Part three : The first premiership and the first retirement 1868-1876.; title: "My mission is to pacify Ireland"; title: A commanding Prime Minister; title: Irish land and European war; title: Sovereign and Prime Minister; title: "Ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea"; title: Defeat and retirement; title: The temporary withdrawal; title: Part four : The rebound into the second premiership 1876-1885.; title: "Of all the Bulgarian horrors perhaps the greatest"; title: Midlothian beckons; title: Victory, where are thy fruits?; title: Gladstone becomes the grand old man; title: The cloud in the West darkens; title: The third Reform Bill; title: Murderer of Gordon?; title: Part five : Ireland dominates and age withers 1885-1898.; title: Slow road to Damascus; title: Schism and failure; title: "The union and disunion of hearts"; title: The leaden victory; title: Last exit to Hawarden; title: The closing of the doors of the senses