Suchergebnisse

"Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) was a prominent English journalist, banker, and man of letters. For many years he was editor of The Economist, and to this day the magazine includes a weekly "Bagehot" column. His analyses of politics, economics, and public affairs were nothing short of brilliant. Sadly, he left no memoir. How, then, does this book bear the title, The Memoirs of Walter Bagehot? Frank Prochaska explains, "Given my longstanding interest in Bagehot's life and times, I decided to compose a memoir on his behalf." And so, in this imaginative reconstruction of the memoir Bagehot might have written, Prochaska assumes his subject's voice, draws on his extensive writings (Bagehot's Collected Works fill 15 volumes), and scrupulously avoids what Bagehot considered that most unpardonable of faults -- dullness. A faux autobiography allows for considerable license, but Prochaska remains true to Bagehot's character and is accurate in his depiction of the times. The memoir immerses us in the spirit of the Victorian era and makes us wish to have known Walter Bagehot. He is, Prochaska observes, the Victorian with whom we would most want to have dinner."--Provided by publisher.

The King's Fund was the leading charitable institution for the support of the voluntary hospitals of London before the creation of the NHS and continues to seek to improve health care and management. This study places the Fund in the context of the history of philanthropy and social provision

Students of institutional charity must sometimes share Walter Bagehot's melancholy doubt "whether the benevolence of mankind does most harm or good"; but they do not dispute that philanthropists were ubiquitous in England by the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Sir James Stephen called the period the age of charitable societies. "For the cure of every sorrow […] there are patrons, vice-presidents, and secretaries. For the diffusion of every blessing […] there is a committee." Many issues raised by the expansion of philanthropy have been treated with considerable insight. But at least one question has largely escaped the historian: the role of charitable women among the "Fathers of the Victorians".