Victorian Prelude : A History of English Manners 1700-1830

SAMUEL JOHNSON loved the busy stir and the full tide of existence in eighteenth-century London. Nevertheless, he knew that crime was as common and rancid as the open sewers of the great city. All measures to reduce lawlessness seemed to fail -even the device of parading condemned criminals before the public on the way to the gibbet. In "The Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn" Hogarth vividly pictured this commonplace scene, and in his "London" Johnson wrote: Preface 1964 Acknowledgments Contents Introduction Part One: The Eighteenth Century I. Hardy Recusants II. A Decade of Innovations 1780 - 1790 III. Reform or Ruin Part Two: 1800 - 1830 IV. Toward a New Opinion V. The Societies VI. The Model Female VII. The Improvement of The Masses VIII. Changing Taste and Temperament IX. Censors and Reformers X. Censors and Expurgators Part Three: 1820 - 1830 XI. Victorianism Bibliography Index