The Victorian world picture - David Newsome

Based on the perceptions and reactions of contemporary observers, this work examines how the Victorians themselves tried to come to grips with the vastly changing world in which they lived. It surveys such areas as the increase of industrialization, the impact of the railways on daily life, and the rise of population; then, in the 1850s and 1860s, there was the end of religious certainty as Darwinian evolution cut through the ranks of churchgoers, and the beginnings of the Great Depression; finally, in the 1880s and 90s, self-help and retrenchment gave way before an increasingly collectivist and imperialist state.