I really enjoyed this book. I am a nineteenth century scholar and loved learning these not-so-known individuals and their interesting stories.

A very quick and interesting read! I thoroughly enjoyed this book and loved reading.
I found the subjects extremely great and found that they were well researched and the author done a fantastic job

A very interesting and informative book. Some of this names were relevant because of the modernity of their ideas or their anrticonformism.
They were all interesting and none is well known name.
I discovered interesting people and enjoyed this well written book.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Radical Victorians is the story of an eclectic mix of individuals who basically dared to think differently, or outside the box. The Victorian era was one of huge and unprecedented change. The industrial revolution affected the lives of rural farm workers and made numerous unlikely individuals very wealthy. Science was prevalent in day to day life in a way that we mostly take for granted and it’s in this context that James Hobson has selected a number of people whose views were different to those around them.

I wasn’t aware of the majority of the people and for that reason alone, I’ve found this a really fascinating slice of social history. I’ve dipped in and out of the stories over a couple of weeks as there’s much to take in and there’s real incentive to look further into the background of some. I like the narrative style which makes this book a pleasure to read rather than a dull slog through facts and history. The subjects covered are wide ranging, from eugenics to prostitution, vegetarianism to spiritualism. Rather than focus on the famous, this selection brings other influential thinkers to life and gives them a rightly deserved place in history. We may not agree with their views but it’s the way society is shaped and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this biographical review.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

The last quarter of the nineteenth century was a time when people began to question everything. With the inventions such as telephones, internal combustion cars, electricity for homes and businesses, people began to get used to new products and new ideas.

People created vegetarianism for those who felt that the eating of meat was not fair to the animals who were raised as food. Anti-vivisection, because many animals were operated on while they were awake and alive. Especially in England, the number of the poor who worked six and one-half days a week, alcohol was the only recreation(?) they could afford, but it destroyed people and families. Cremation in a city like London made sense when land was very scarce and graveyards were of better use if made into parks.

The are some of the new thoughts of philosophers and fakirs who pursued making life easier and better for all those living in the crowded cities.

This is a fascinating book, although many of these radical Victorians were extremely dogmatic, and sound rather unlikeable. However, it is often the unlikeable ones who get things done, perhaps.

Some of these radical Victorians are quite well-known, such as Keir Hardie, but others are not known now. For example, if you mentioned Josephine Baker to anyone, they would assume that you meant the black singer, not a minister's wife who helped prostitutes in Victorian England. Charles Dilke is another one who isn't very well-known. Even W.T. Stead would not be a name familiar to most people now.

This can be difficult to read at times because the people that these Victorian radicals helped lived in such grim conditions, and because most of them had hard lives, and were badly treated.

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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ISBN 9781399008266
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3.5*

This was a readable and mostly interesting selection of biographies of various middle and upper class intellectuals in Victorian Britain who held opinions not generally shared by the majority of the establishment or population at the time. Many of the biographies were very interesting to read, and I ended up adding various names and books to my list yo research further.

The selection of people was knowingly and openly limited - the book's introduction highlights that they are all from the same social class and specifically people who sought to win verbal arguments rather than take direct action. The extent to which this approach is successful is probably a matter of opinion - personally I would have liked a rather broader approach, but I did value the way that the overlapping social circles were shown throughout the book.

The topics covered were varied and all interesting, although at times the stated link to 'radicalism' as defined in the book as going unrecognised and accepted at the end of the period, seemed rather stretched.

I was also very interested in a few topics that were vaguely mentioned in passing, for example the concept of race comes up a coupe of times, but I would have liked a greater depth here, and some non white figures would have been very welcome. A few of the women mentioned were, or appeared to be, in same sex relationships, and again this would have been interesting to delve further into.

Overall this was a good general introductory overview of many interesting and independently minded individuals, with limitations and also its own potential and use.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC

Radical Victorians by James Hobson tells us about a group of Victorians (obvs!) who defied convention in various ways: espousing vegetarianism, teetotalism, cremation, women’s legal equality and many other views that were ahead of their time. The individuals are:
- Anna Kingsford
- Frances Power Cobbe
- Ann Jane Carlile
- Florence Cook
- Sir Henry Thompson
- Isabelle Holmes
- Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy
- Richard Pankhurst
- George Drysdale
- Annie Besant
- Edward Truelove
- Charles Bradlaugh
- Josephine Butler
- W.T. Stead
- Stuart Headlam
- Keir Hardie
- Henry Hyndham
- Sir Charles Dilke
- Francis Dalton
To my shame, I had only heard of five of them and, as I read Hobson’s book, I realised I actually knew very little about those few. This is perhaps not surprising. Hobson has chosen people who change the future but (mostly) didn’t live to see their views accepted. Thus, the book excludes Florence Nightingale and Charles Darwin – their views were radical when first proposed but were fairly mainstream when Queen Victoria died. Francis Dalton was a great scientist but made one huge misjudgement: eugenics. Whilst the basic science may be correct (racehorses can be bred for stamina, potatoes can be bred to resist blight), the moral consequences are shudderingly deplorable. Modern cancel culture is writing him out of history, which is a shame, as he did achieve some great things: the first weather map in a newspaper; breakthroughs in fingerprint technology and statistical methods.

Hobson sets the context for each life, explaining the standard contemporary views and showing how unusual the above team seemed to other Victorians. Many of them had the luxury of wealthy parents and could afford to throw themselves whole-heartedly into fighting for good causes. (As Hobson puts it, they were part of “the leisured intellectual elite.” Some, however, like Keir Hardie, the founder of the Independent Labour Party, were desperately poor.

The book is well-written and provides a lot of interesting information about each life. It’s not as dry as you might expect, I shall read it again and I know I’ll get more out of it on a second or third reading. And that brings me onto my one cavil with the book. Many (most / all?) of the cast list were known to each other and they pop up in each other’s chapters. The trouble is, I can’t remember whether, when we read about Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy going to see the work of Josephine Butler, have we read about Butler yet or not? There are thirty-five mentions of Charles Bradlaugh before we reach the chapter dedicated to him. It’s all good stuff, but the interconnectedness makes it confusing. I know E.M. Forster told us to “Only connect!” but I sometimes wonder if Hobson has taken the instruction to extremes!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Pen & Sword for the free review copy of the book.

#RadicalVictorians #NetGalley

*Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for supplying a copy of this e-book in return for an honest review.*

Radical Victorians was a surprisingly good read about lesser-known movers and shakers of Victorian Britain. Each chapter covers a different area of "radical" thought where the highlighted individual played a big role for reasons that are often forgotten about today. The one name I knew from the people featured was Keir Hardie for his involvement in the early British Labour Party. This meant that the book provided a lot of interesting new information, which is always a plus for me. Another interesting point was their definition of radical including many topics that would be seen by many as being far from progressive by today's standards.

This was a fascinating book about radical Victorians and how they influenced how we live today. I was thrilled to see how many women were mentioned and included in this book. Really interesting read.

James Hobson details the lives of 19 trailblazing Victorians in this fascinating and very readable book.
None of the 19, except perhaps Labour Party founder, James Keir Hardie are well-known today. Hobson's interest is not in those who like Charles Darwin, saw their radical theories widely absorbed into mainstream society. during their lifetimes. The book is more interested in the outliers: the often lonely figures who stuck to their guns in the face of almost universal indifference, hostility and sometimes hatred.
None of the 19 figures featured saw their ideas lived to see their ideas become universally accepted.. Some of their outlandish notions, such as gender equality, freedom of the press and the notion of cremating the dead, have become widely accepted since. Others, such as socialism, vegetarianism and republicanism remain minority opinions, but are at least tolerated today. Others, such as spiritualism and eugenics have largely fallen out of favour.
They are a mixed bunch. For one thing, the vegetarian, Anna Kingsford,, socialist Henry Hyndman and scientist, Francis Galton were all undeniably very racist by modern standards. Although Hobson keeps an open mind, it is difficult to read the chapter about spiritualist, Florence Cook, without concluding she was some sort of fraud. Many of these figures were eccentric. Some were deeply flawed. All were very unusual.
But some undeniably great things and did much to improve the lives of large numbers of people. The 19th century temperance movement has developed a reputation for hypocrisy and cant. In the chapter on Ann Jane Carlile, Hobson reminds us that this wasn't always the case and was, at any rate, tackling an extremely serious alcohol problem which was destroying thousands of lives. Josephine Butler, likewise, did invaluable work in combatting the sexual double standard enforced by the odious Contagious Diseases Act. Even Francis Galton, today notorious as 'the father of eugenics' was justly celebrated during his lifetime for his very real scientific achievements. His ultimately wrongheaded ideas about selective breeding were shared by many on both the left and right of the political spectrum at the time. Long after Galton's death they would become inextricably linked to the horrors of Nazism.
In short, this book presents a fascinating portrait of a society tentatively taking the small but essential stepping stones towards the world we know today.

This was such an interesting read, obviously everybody knows about the suffragettes during the Victorian era but this was a refreshing fread because it covered more than that. I had no idea that there were men who were thinking progressively as well it was fascinating. There were people that I hadn't heard about before reading this that I found inspiring. A really good read.