Hilary Fraser provides a comprehensive and thorough survey of English prose in the nineteenth century which draws from a wide variety of fields including art, literary theory and criticisim, biography, letters, journals, sermons, and travel reportage. Through these works the cultural, social, literary and political life of the twentieth century - a period of great intellectual activity - can be charted, discussed and assessed.

For the first time, an inclusive critical survey of nineteenth-century non-fiction is presented, that traces the century's ideological and cultural upheavals as...