Portrait of an Age

'Who are these Victorians? By what mark are we to know them? What creed, what doctrine, what institution was there among them which was not at some time or other debated or assailed? I can think of only two: Representative Institutions and the Family.' G.M. Young took as his subject the condition of England and the growth of the Victorian mind from 1837 to 1901. It is a remarkable survey, written with penetrating scholarship in a style and language which owes much to Gibbon for its clarity and wit, and to Macaulay for the assembled movement and march of its narrative. 'It is still, I think, the greatest single study of the age in any language...His footnotes are not unworthy of one of his masters, Gibbon.' OBSERVER First published in 1936.

G.M. Young was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. 'I was born when the Queen had still nearly nineteen years to reign; I saw her twice, Gladstone once; I well remember the death of Newman and Tennyson, and my earliest recollection of the Abbey brings back the flowers fresh on Browning's grave.'