Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Series Editor’s Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Into the Past: A Brief Foreword
- Winter: 15 September 1894 – 28 February 1895
- Spring: 1 March 1895 – 30 May 1895
- Summer: 1 June 1895 – 31 August 1895
- Autumn into Winter: 1 September 1895 – 31 December 1895
- Bibliography
- Index
Into the Past: A Brief Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2026
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Series Editor’s Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Into the Past: A Brief Foreword
- Winter: 15 September 1894 – 28 February 1895
- Spring: 1 March 1895 – 30 May 1895
- Summer: 1 June 1895 – 31 August 1895
- Autumn into Winter: 1 September 1895 – 31 December 1895
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is pleasant to think what a splendid time the historians of the 21st century will have when they take to writing monographs.
Rudyard Kipling to Charles Eliot Norton, [8] February 1895 (Kipling 1990: 173–4)I can never forget 1895. To lie awake night after night, staring wide awake, hopeless of sleep, tormented in nerves, like a disembodied spirit, to watch one's own corpse, as it were, day after day, is an experience which no sane man with a conscience would wish to repeat.
Lord Rosebery, 30 September 1903 (McKinstry 2005: 347)In Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno, Concluded (1893), the mysterious ‘Mein Herr’ tells how, in his country, maps are no longer drawn to scale: each mile on a map is a mile long. Jorge Luis Borges's parable, ‘On Exactitude in Science’ (1960) relates a similar story, explaining how the Cartographers Guilds of an ancient civilisation surveyed their empire in such detail that the map they produced was the same size as the terrain it covered. The fate of these hapless geographers is a salutary one, and I was mindful of it throughout my work on this book.
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- 1895Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain, pp. 1 - 6Publisher: Edinburgh University PressFirst published in: 2026
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