James Anthony Froude remains one of the most commonly referenced and frequently cited of Victorian public intellectuals. Known to intellectual historians as the author of a monumental History of England in the sixteenth century and as a key exponent of Victorian religious doubt, he is also frequently referenced as the author of a series of scandalously provocative novels and of a hugely controversial biography of Thomas Carlyle. Historians of the British Empire and of Ireland have frequently been compelled to address his sometimes outrageous (but often representative) historical writings. Scholars of mid-Victorian politics have no less often turned to Froude as a typical representative of Victorian fears of democracy, while more recently students of political thought have identified him as an early representative of a new form of Commonwealth civic republicanism. Yet for all that Froude remains a strangely marginalised, fragmented, and neglected figure. Ciaran Brady now addresses this remarkable gap. Based on a thorough critical examination of all of Froude's published works - many of which have been discovered and identified here for the first time - and supplemented by intensive research into Froude's private and widely scattered manuscript materials, he offers the first sustained study of Froude's life and thought. Against the common assumption that Froude's life can be divided along simple lines - the sometime enfant terrible who aged into a respectable man of letters - he argues that there was a deeper coherence underlying everything he wrote from the scandalous productions of the 1840s to the authoritative university lectures of the 1890s. In addition to providing a study of a major but neglected nineteenth century intellectual, Brady offers a critical analysis of the impulses, the aspirations, and the unquestioned assumptions underlying the Romantic project of personal renovation, and an alternative view of that unique phenomenon known as 'the Victorian sage'.

About the Author
Ciaran Brady has published widely on topics concerning early modern history and on the general topic of historiography. He was joint-editor of the leading peer-review journal Irish Historical Studies (1992-2002), and was President of the Irish Historical Society (2005-2007).

Reviews
Brady is to be commended for bringing such conceptual unity and clarity to Froude's very complex and contradictory set of writings, from the fictional and confessional to the historical and religious, from the political and the personal to the autobiographical and biographical. * Ian Hesketh, Irish Studies Review *
Review from previous edition
Brady writes about even the most difficult material with consistent clarity and energy, and with a cool but generous relish for all aspects of Froude's enormous output. Froude's often outre, sometimes absurb and occasionally repellent political opinions and activities are expounded with insight and sympathy, and the portrait of the complex, gifted and exasperating individual that emerges is entirely pursuasive. * Eamon Duffy, Times Literary Supplement *
a rich slice of intellectual history as well as a memorable portrait of an impressive, if intermittently appalling, personality who left an enduring mark on Irish historiography, Carlylean biography and much else. * Roy Foster, The Times Literary Supplement *
Brady has mastered not only Froude's own prodigious body of writing but also a vast, demanding literature on Victorian intellectual history. The result is an erudite and absorbing study, a masterclass of scholarly exegesis and lucid analysis. Brady's study may not make Froude any more appealing, nor his many offensive views and prejudices any more palatable, than they have hitherto been considered. But the work triumphantly renders Froude, the public historian and sage, more intelligible and infinitely more interesting than we may have assumed and, in the process, illumines large swathes of the intellectual landscape of Victorian England. * The Irish Times *
[Froude's] unpublished autobiography should have been called Disappointment. There is nothing disappointing, however, in this elegant biography. * History Today *
With consummate skill and erudition Brady traces the intricate course of Froude's thinking through his work... * Literary Review *
[Froude's] fate is a puzzle, and Brady's exhaustive investigation is the first to give it the attention it deserves. * John Pemble, London Review of Books *
Absorbing * John-Paul McCarthy, Sunday Independent (Ireland) *
Mr. Brady ... has written a shrewd, vigilant inquiry into biography and literary ethics * The Wall Street Journal *
this book could not be more timely, or more useful in elucidating the roots of a prophetic vocation * Julia Stapleton, American Historical Review *
In sum, this is the first thoroughly comprehensive intellectual biography of its subject (with due respect to Julia Markus's 2005 literary biography), and it offers a sophisticated and integrated picture of Froude's thought and writings. * Rosemary Mitchell, History *
an immensely rewarding read ... Brady has painted the most vivid picture yet of his thought processes and rationale in the context of an era of political uncertainty. This book must be ranked as one of the great modern achievements in nineteenth-century intellectual history. * Colin W. Reid, English Historical Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198726531
Author Ciaran Brady
Format Paperback
Page Count 518
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 786g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 161mm * 29mm