In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with silver title on the spine.

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‘This is stupendous. The British nineteenth century, in all its complexity, all its horror, all its energy, all its hopes is laid bare. This is the definitive history , and will remain so for generations’ A.N. Wilson

Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800–1906 is a book by David Cannadine, the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University and President of the British Academy. The book is about the Victorian era in nineteenth-century Britain. It begins with the Act of Union in 1800 and ends with the Parliamentary victory of the Liberal Party in 1906. Cannadine opens with the Charles Dickens’ quote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” He argues that Britain maintained its status as leader of the global economy and possessor of the largest navy in the world. At the same time, the country was plagued by internal problems and social conflicts. According to the Whig Interpretation of history, the “victorious century” represented a time of expanding democracy and wave of Parliamentary acts providing political reform and universal manhood suffrage. Cannadine argues,

“This was a country which saw itself at the summit of the world. And yet it was a society also convulsed by doubt, fear and introspection. Repeatedly, politicians and writers felt themselves to be staring into the abyss and what is seen as an era of irritating self-belief was in practice obsessed by a sense of its own fragility, whether as a great power or as a moral force. Victorious Century catches the relish and humour of the age, but also the dilemmas of a kind with which we remain familiar today.”