Public Speech and the Culture of Public Life in the Age of Gladstone / / Joseph Meisel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Meisel, Joseph,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2001]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2001
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)

By the last decades of the nineteenth century, more people were making more speeches to greater numbers in a wider variety of venues than at any previous time. This book argues that a recognizably modern public life was created in Victorian Britain largely through the instrumentality of public speech. Shedding new light on the careers of many of the most important figures of the Victorian era and beyond, including Gladstone, Disraeli, Sir Robert Peel, John Bright, Joseph Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and Canon Liddon, the book traces the ways in which oratory came to occupy a central position in the conception and practice of Victorian public life. Not a study of rhetoric or a celebration of great oratory, the book stresses the social developments that led to the production and consumption of these speeches.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Tables -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Schools for Public Speaking -- 2. The House of Commons -- 3. Religion -- Law -- The Platform -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index