The Place of the Past in English Culture c. 1890–1914 (original) (raw)

Englishmen and women experienced the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as times of great change. Among other things, these years saw the acceleration of technological advance, the acquisition of vast new imperial territories, the perceived 'democratization' of the political system, and the decisive transformation of England into a country whose population and economic activity were overwhelmingly concentrated in urban rather than rural areas. Awareness of rapid change, of a widening gap between past and present, was hardly a development peculiar to this point in time-a fact to which contemporary experience of the Renaissance and the French Revolution bears eloquent testimony. 1 But in England, as elsewhere in the industrialized world, the period around the turn of the twentieth century saw widespread and acute levels of concern with the speed of change and the passage of time. As consciousness of accelerating change deepened and developed at the Wn de siècle, what place did the past occupy in English cultural life? The prominent place of the past in the culture of the Wrst three-quarters of the nineteenth century has been well documented. In these years, antiquarianism Xourished, historical subjects were extremely popular with novelists and artists, and the celebrated 'Whig interpretation of history' achieved its apotheosis. In these years, also, a vision of a pre-industrial 'Merrie England' of the 'Olden Time' enjoyed wide currency. This vision, which Peter Mandler has discussed so ably, embodied vigorously Thanks to