THE NINETEENTH CENTURY saw greater changes than any previous era: in the ways nations and societies were organized, in scientific knowledge, and in nonreligious intellectual development. The crucial players in this drama were the British, who invented both capitalism and imperialism and were incomparably the richest, most important investors in the developing world. In this sense, England's position has strong resemblances to America's in the late twentieth century. In this spectacular work, A. N. Wilson singles out those writers, statesmen, scientists, philosophers, and soldiers whose lives illuminated an age on the cusp of modernity. Wilson's accomplishment in this book is to explain, through these signature lives, how Victorian England started a revolution that still hasn't ended.

The 19th century saw greater changes than any previous era. In this spectacular work, Wilson singles out those writers, statesmen, scientists, philosophers, and soldiers whose lives illuminated an age on the cusp of modernity. Wilson explains through these signature lives how Victorian England started a revolution that still hasn't ended.