A Polite and Commercial People

Drawing on up-to-date research, this first volume in The New Oxford History of England is the most authoritative and comprehensive general history of England between the accession of George II and the loss of the American colonies.

Delving beneath the surface serenity of the age of elegance, Paul Langford reveals a world of simmering discontent in which evangelical enthusiasm clashed with scientific rationalism, aristocratic government with popular insubordination, industrial and imperial expansion with plebian poverty, and sentimentality with utilitarian reform.