J. Carter Wood takes as his major theme the theory of Norbert Elias describing a transition from customary to civilized attitudes toward violence. Wood argues that the attitudes coexisted during the years of his study, 1820–70. With a heavy reliance on Michel Foucault, Wood also hopes to address violence as “language.” Wood suggests that categorizing violent acts for analysis “has the potential to conceal the outlines of a comprehensive and more or less coherent mentality of violence” (69). Eschewing the more conventional categories, Wood explores violence according to six matrices. In the first chapter, he examines the issue of narrative and counternarratives during the nineteenth century as seen in the competing claims of custom and civilization. The second chapter examines middle-class conceptions of civilization and savagery. He also explores the nineteenth-century invention of violence as a focus of concern. The third chapter deals with customs in which violence can be justified on grounds of retribution, autonomy, or discipline. In the fourth and strongest chapter, he analyzes the significance of ritual in the English tradition of fair fighting. Chapter 5 examines built and imaginary spaces. The concept here is that terms like “street” and “home” refer not only to the places themselves but also to the cultural meanings of those spaces. Chapter 6 looks at issues of performance and resistance.

While these are not the most conventional categories (though none of them is uncharted territory), many of the conclusions are rewordings of long-standing conclusions. For example, most of the analysis of space duplicates the public-private divide, which is standard in Victorian studies. All too often Wood uses the language of discourse to restate the work of earlier scholars. The problem is apparent from the opening when Wood suggests that it is wrong to speak of violence as “meaningless.” With at least forty years of scholarship devoted to the meaning of violence, the premise that scholars have suggested violence is “meaningless” is a straw man.

Wood's expressed goal of finding a coherent mentality of violence is further complicated by the fact that the meaning of any particular act of violence is determined by its context and that all analysis requires categorization. Violence is meaningful, but, like spoken language, its meaning is contingent and socially and culturally determined. Regarding the theme of the change from customary to civilized attitudes toward violence, though Wood demonstrates that the two theories coexisted during the nineteenth century, his depiction is static. Despite including material ranging over a fifty-year period, Wood does not offer a chronological analysis. He suggests in his conclusion that the transition is largely completed by the last decades of the nineteenth century, but he stops short of explaining the process of change over time.

The book is strongest when Wood analyzes the primary materials he found in the Home Office archives of the southeastern circuit. But, with the exception of the chapter on the ritual of the fair fight, Wood rarely attempts to take on the primary sources directly. The ambivalence demonstrated both by participants and judicial authorities about the rituals of violence lends itself to considerable speculation, but Wood gives much of the material short shrift. His spends too little time on the analysis of primary sources and too much in a repetitive discussion of his theoretical posits; hence, the connections between the evidence and the theory are not fully developed. This slim volume (only 147 pages of actual text) is full of long quotes from various secondary sources. Though Wood quotes virtually everybody in the field, he does not fully address these quotes in terms of how his work confirms, contradicts, or builds on them.

Wood demonstrates a very thorough knowledge of the existing literature; however, his own research and insights are often buried amid an avalanche of other scholars’ words and thoughts.