Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain [Hardcover]

In this stimulating study of mid-Victorian ethics and the political economy, Geoffrey Searle argues that entrenched ideals of public virtue posed a much more effective challenge to market forces than the need to mitigate poverty. Highly readable as well as instructive, the book captures the ideological dilemma at the heart of nineteenth-century British history.

Well researched and well written, and is relevant to the problems of capitalism in the 1980s and '90s. --CHOICE

Searle examines the ambivalent responses of middle-class Victorians to the seemingly centrifugal forces of commercialism and morality. In doing so Searle illuminates a neglected area in studies of the middle class and contributes significantly to the growing body of scholarship concerning commodity culture...Extraordinarily ambitious in scope and detail...[O]ffers scholars a complex and nuanced consideration of the varied and numerous moral implications of the market forces which came to dominate Victorian British culture. --Albion

G.R. Searle...has steadily built up an impressive body of modern historical scholarship...[H]is books have consistently fled the confines of party, parliament, and cabinet into the more elusive realms of corruption or entrepreneurial influence...[A] painstaking and nuanced study. --Journal ofModern History

[A] fascinating and readable history that will be of interest to historians, economists, political scientists, and anyone interested in questions of business ethics and government regulation. --Journal of Interdisciplinary History