I was recommended by a professor in the university to read this book (I am a student studying Victorian Literature) in the first place, and after reading it, I found this book so informative and easy-to-read that it has now become one of my 'handbook' for the Victorian era. This book tells you in nearly every aspect but in a very concise way how the Victorians back then think and believe. I personally think that this is more than just a book about some history and facts of the people living in the 19th century England. Upon reading it, readers will surely be able to appreciate the works of those Victorian writers/poets more because they can then really comprehend how the Victorians' lives and beliefs were like, and how and why they would behave the way they did, and most important of all, that they were not as old-fashioned and conservative as contemporary people think they were.

First published in 1957 with the intent to show some of the roots of the "modern mind" (which was then still recovering from McCarthyism), Walter Houghton's book more than accomplishes its stated goals. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND is divided in to three parts in which Houghton examines Victorian emotional, intellectual and moral attitudes. He bases these discussions on the premise that 1830-1870 was an "age of transition," and that the Victorian English were the first to think of their own time as "an era of change FROM the past TO the future."

The Victorians found the pace of their life compared to that of their grandfathers to be inordinately fast, they both lamented and welcomed the breakdown of old regimes and the coming into its own of the Industrial Revolution. Darwin's theory of evolution made thousands of them quake in their boots--even though so many of them were raised on a wrathful God more than a loving God, the prospect of no God at all sent many running for the metaphorical hills. Throughout the book, Houghton extensively quotes the Victorians themselves (e.g. Ruskin, Arnold, Carlyle, Charles Kingsley) and it is shocking and uncanny how many times what was written a good 150 years ago resembles what you might find in the press and literature of today. This from 1851: "everybody has his own little ISM . . . by which the country can be saved." How about this line from Carlyle's PAST AND PRESENT: "we have profoundly forgotten everywhere that Cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings."

A key to understanding how Victorians thought about themselves and their world, Houghton points out, lies in accepting the many contradictions and tensions of the age, most importantly their overwhelming optimism balanced against their high level of anxiety. Of the book's fourteen chapters, particularly interesting and provocative are those on "The Critical Spirit--and The Will to Believe," "The Commercial Spirit," "Dogmatism," and "Hypocrisy."

Houghton admits from the start that he's out for the "general sense" of how people thought, and he narrows his purview even further to the literate classes. He therefore makes many sweeping statements that could still meet with criticism--even with the quotations he provides from the writers of the time. THE VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND is still a useful background text for scholars, though it might put off those with ISMs on their shoulders. Moreover, it is a rich and engaging book for the student or amateur of the Victorian era, which, while different in several important ways from our own American society, is all too eerily similar when you come right down to it. Highly recommended!

I haven't read this book, but I bet it's pretty good.