Reading Gladstone
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: April 15, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780230007659
Subjects: Europe - Great Britain - General; History / Great Britain; History; History - General History; History: World
Description: "William Ewart Gladstone is a figure of central importance in British history who has normally and understandably been treated as a statesman, the role in which he achieved international fame. Reading Gladstone, however, investigates areas of his life which have rarely, if ever, been examined in the past: his role as village librarian, his synchronized collection of books and women, and the remarkable transformations that occurred in his (self- ) representation as a scholar-politician. By exploring the ways in which Gladstone's reading and book-collecting possessed significance in Victorian culture, Ruth Clayton Windscheffel's book makes a major contribution to fresh intellectual and cultural perspectives on the statesman."--Jacket.