U Ideas of General Interest -- July 2001University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Science Editor (217) 333 -2177; [email protected]
BRITAINVolume fetes historian, illuminates 19th & 20th century England
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Thanks to a new book of essays in honor of a living eminent historian of Victorian Britain, readers can trace the modern department store to the expansive, elaborate and sometimes ethereal market halls of Liverpool and Leeds, built in 1822 and 1857, respectively.
The history of the 19th century marketplace presents a more complex scene than the grim one painted by Charles Dickens. While a pattern of "blind neglect of municipal services and willful physical segregation of the classes is certainly grounded in fact," writes essay author James Schmiechen, a historian at Central Michigan University, "these problems existed side by side with another pattern, one of a progressive reinvention of the marketplace that provided for a new definition of modern consumer behavior and a new understanding of the relationship between architecture, building, and everyday life." The market hall also was "the agency" for a food revolution, he writes.
The volume, which celebrates Walter Arnstein, emeritus professor of history at the University of Illinois, also offers a re-examination of the role of the cinema and its manager during the darkest days of the 1930s. "Picture houses" were, we learn from UI author Stephen Shafer, "cherished community fixtures" that offered not only short-term escapism by means of the silver screen, but also a cornucopia of services to help relieve the plight of the struggling working class -- and also to curb its potential unrest.
Among other things, cinemas provided a place for families to go to socialize and to escape the hardships -- and overcrowding -- of home life. Fund-raisers were held on the premises, as were annual Christmas shows; public health services were provided through the cinemas, door prizes were doled out, and recreational youth clubs encouraged Christian values and patriotism. Cinemas also served as a major information source. Weekly newsreels not only carried the news, but also conveyed a sense of what was expected of citizens.
The book, "Splendidly Victorian: Essays in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British History in Honour of Walter L. Arnstein" (Ashgate), is the collaboration of some of Arnstein's former students at the UI, who each contributed a chapter. Todd E.A. Larson (UI) and Michael H. Shirley (now teaching at Eastern Illinois University) edited the volume. Essays cover a wide spectrum, from political caricatures to British Army "fashion," religious periodicals to working class health care.
In his introduction, Paul Schroeder, also an emeritus UI history professor, wrote about Arnstein's qualities: a "lucid style" and "interesting exposition" plus "the ability to reach firm, clear judgments and conclusions while at the same time maintaining a sense of balance, restraint and moderation, giving all sides their due and weighing all the facts impartially." Over a span of 40 years, in the classroom and through his publications, Arnstein has "arguably introduced more students to British history than has any other American historian," his editors write. Arnstein's "Britain Yesterday and Today: 1830 to the Present" and "The Age of Aristocracy: 1688-1830" went into their eighth editions this year.
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