In a period scarred by apprehensions of revolution, war, invasion, poverty, and disease, elite members of society lived in constant fear of what they thought of as the 'mad, bad, and dangerous people'. This book examines the changes in politics and society in the years 1783-1846.

Another consequence of these tensions was the intellectual engagement with society, as for example in the Romantic Movement, a literary phenomenon that brought English culture to the forefront of European attention for the first time. At the same time the country experienced the great religious revival, loosely described under the heading 'evangelicalism'. Slowly but surely, the raffish and rakish style of eighteenth-century society, having reached a peak in the Regency, then succumbed to the new norms of respectability popularly known as 'Victorianism'.

1. England 1783-1846: An Overview
2. Politics in the Time of Pitt and Fox 1783-1807
3. Pitt and Plutocracy: The Social and Psychological Foundations
4. Politics in the Time of Liverpool and Canning 1807-1827
5. Ruling Ideologies
6. The Crisis of the Old Order 1827-1832
7. Contesting Mechanical Philosophy
8. Politics in the Time of Melbourne and Peel 1833-1846
9. The Condition and Reconditioning of England
10. Afterwards: 'There are no barbarians any longer.'
Bibliography
Index