Making English Morals

Campaigns for moral reform were a recurrent and distinctive feature of public life in later Georgian and Victorian England. Anti-slavery temperance charity organisation cruelty prevention 'social purity' advocates and more all promoted their causes through mobilisation of citizen volunteer support. This 2004 book sets out to explore the world of these volunteer networks their foci of concern their patterns of recruitment their methods of operation and the responses they aroused. In its exploration of this culture of self-consciously altruistic associational effort the book provides a systematic survey of moral reform movements as a distinct tradition of citizen action over this period as well as casting light on the formation of a middle-class culture torn in this stage of economic and political nation-building between acceptance of a market-organised society and unease about the cultural consequences of doing so. This is a revelatory book that is both compelling and accessible. Language: English