1 of 2

History, like everything else, has become multimedia. When it comes to learning about the past, books are still the main course, but increasingly there are a variety of dishes upon which history is served. Beginning with this issue, we're going to make an even greater effort to make readers aware of the best books, movies, recordings, CDs, and Web sites related to the topic. Here's what we've come up with on Wilberforce and British social reform.

You'd expect a man as great as William Wilberforce to generate some fine biographies, and he has. Immediately after his death, two of his sons, Robert Isaac and Samuel, penned The Life of William Wilberforce (1839), which is the source of a great deal of material found in later biographies.

For modern treatments, see John Pollock's Wilberforce (Lion, 1977) for a full account, or Garth Lean's God's Politician (Helmers & Howard, 1987) for a quick read. In editing the issue, we found Sir Reginald Coupland's Wilberforce (Collins, 1945) a nice balance of engaging prose and good scholarship.

Wilberforce's best seller is a long book with a long title. The SCM 1958 version retained the title—A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity—but has given us only the best of the wordy Wilberforce.

Local libraries carry a fair share of books on slavery. One we found particularly helpful, especially for the gripping images it contains, is Susanne Everett's The Slaves: An Illustrated History of the Monstrous Evil (Putnam, 1978).

A thorough and fascinating account of the slave trade can be found in Roger Anstey's The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition: 1760-1810 (Macmillan, 1975).

Wilberforce, of course, was but the most famous social reformer, and abolition, only the most famous cause of the 1800s. To gain an appreciation of the breadth of concern and the major Christian social activists of the era, note these books:

Saints in Politics by Ernest Howse (University of Toronto Press, 1952) and Saints and Society by Earle Cairns (Moody, 1960) give nice overviews of the Clapham Sect and other Christian social reformers. Evangelical Faith and Public Zeal: Evangelicals and Society in Britain 1780-1980 edited by John Wolffe (SPCK, 1995) contains essays that explore various causes to which evangelicals gave themselves.

To narrow to one concern, the inner city, see Salvation in the Slums: Evangelical Social Work 1865-1920 by Norris Magnuson (Baker, 1977) and Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-Class London, 1828-1860 by Donald M. Lewis for two careful and intriguing studies.

Again, most local libraries carry biographies of the more famous reformers of 1800s England, like Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry-though such books often ignore the importance of their spiritual commitment. Two biographies that do not downplay the role of Christian faith are David W. Bebbington's William Ewart Gladstone: Faith & Politics in Victorian Britain (Eerdmans, 1993) and Georgina Battiscombe's Shaftesbury: A Biography of the Seventh Earl, 1801-1885 (PBS, 1974).

Probably no writer did a better job of evoking the sights, sounds, and smells of London, and the customs of his day, than did Charles Dickens. Take up and read David Copperfield, Hard Times, Oliver Twist, or even A Christmas Carol to do some "serious" historical background research.

next page... |  1 of 2

share this page

FREE E-Newsletter Sign up for the ChristianHistory.net e-mail newsletter. Discover more about your Christian heritage with this weekly e-newsletter that features key people, topics, and events from the history of Christianity.      RSS Feed   RSS Help