THE GEORGIANS
THE DEEDS AND MISDEEDS OF 18TH-CENTURY BRITAIN
PENELOPE J CORFIELD
Yale, 488pp, £25 In the Times Literary Supplement, Judith Hawley called The Georgians an ‘ambitious chronicle’. Corfield ‘can write with confidence and authority about the whole sweep of the period’, she continued, ‘because she has already contributed greatly to our knowledge of developments that shaped the age, including the rise of the professions, urbanization and democracy... There are chapters on sexuality, literacy, religion, politics, science and technology, trade and overseas expansion. She also looks into social diversity, stressing that although society remained hierarchical, there was a great degree of flexibility and fluidity in its structure, especially among the middle classes.’
Andrew Taylor, in his review for the Times, found Corfield ‘particularly interesting on the quintessentially British subject of class. In 1760 the income of a skilled Sheffield knife or fork grinder could equal that of a poor curate, although one was a lower-class artisan and the other thought of himself, in theory at least, as an educated gentleman... Corfield is adept at switching from the general to the particular.’
In the Sunday Times, Dominic Sandbrook admired the book for finding ‘lots of room for eccentric and contradictory voices’. He was frustrated, however, that Corfield ‘stubbornly shuns any hint of narrative or character. Because the book is entirely thematic, we don’t really get a sense of change over time: one quotation might come from the 1690s, the next from the 1780s. Potentially exciting moments come and go in a few words: the Seven Years’ War, arguably the world’s first global conflict and a pivotal moment in the making of the British Empire, gets half a sentence.’