Scholars have shown substantial interest in Victorian parenting over the past few decades, with excellent studies published on the subject from literary critics, sociologists, historians, and gender studies specialists. Kevin A. Morrison's A Micro-history of Victorian Liberal Parenting draws from many of these recent works while offering a unique emphasis on how a “liberal” philosophical approach to parenting differed from traditional authoritarian approaches: in short, it treated children as rational beings needing education in order to become good citizens rather than subjects of absolute authority from whom only duty and obedience were expected. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophical challenges to monarchical rule inevitably had an impact on philosophies and practices of parenting, so exploring the connection between nineteenth-century political philosophy and domestic realities makes a good deal of sense. Morrison's micro-historical approach keeps his study brief and makes it a fitting publication for Palgrave's Pivot line, which publishes manuscripts longer than journal articles but shorter than most books, or to quote the web page, enables authors to publish research “at its natural length” (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/palgrave-pivot).

But readers might question, “Why a ‘micro-history’?” and “Why John Morley?” as, in fact, this reader did, at least at first. But Morrison ably addresses these questions in both the preface and the introduction (chapter 1), where he indicates that Victorian liberalism is being reappraised by literary and historical scholars, but that this reappraisal has not yet “addressed the implications of Victorian liberalism for intimate personal relations” (2). The micro-history approach is fitting, he argues, because if he attempted to tackle the broad range of real-life and fictional parenting relationships, he might miss the nuances apparent when scrutinizing one particular family. On this point, he quotes Giovanni Levi, who argues that “the unifying principle of all microhistorical research … is the belief that microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved” (5). John Morley offers a particularly intriguing subject for such a study, Morrison contends, because of his substantial literary and political contributions: he was a well-known essayist, biographer, and editor whose works frequently explored the parent-child relationship in the framework of liberalism (particularly in On Compromise, 1874, his treatise on political ethics). As a biographer of Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau; the editor of the Fortnightly Review for fifteen years; and the person many considered to be J. S. Mill's successor (and a close friend of Mill, George Eliot, and G. H. Lewes), Morley was a highly influential man of letters in the late nineteenth-century. He was also influential in politics as a member of Parliament, chief secretary for Ireland (1886, 1892–1895), and secretary of state for India (1905–1910, 1911). Morrison argues that in Morley's publications and in his own experiences with rearing children, he developed a philosophy of “discreet indifference” in parenting that evolved naturally from his liberal political views. Morrison admits that in some ways Morley is an odd choice of subject for a study on parenthood because he never biologically fathered any children. But he was very involved in raising his wife Rose Ayling's two children, Florence and Johnson, and later his nephew Guy, when Morley's brother and sister-in-law died in India. Eventually, Morley also raised his step-son Johnson's children when Johnson was imprisoned for forgery. So, Morley had his share of parenting experiences, even without the biological connection.

Morrison divides his study into eight chapters, with the first and last serving as introduction and conclusion, and the other chapters exploring connections between Morley's family dynamics and his writings. Chapter 2 deals with Morley's relationship with his own father, which was strained to the point of breaking when Morley defied his father's wishes and refused to study for the clergy at Oxford. Morrison argues that this rift shaped Morley's lifelong analysis of parenting and how much authority one should wield in raising children. Chapter 3 concentrates on domestic themes in Morley's early essays, Modern Characteristics (1865) and Studies in Conduct (1869), works which have received scant critical attention, while chapter 4 focuses on Morley's balancing of parental “theory and practice” from 1870 to 1883. Chapter 5 examines his historical and political publications, particularly Voltaire (1872), Rousseau (1873), Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (1886), and On Compromise (1874), which presented a defense of J. S. Mill's On Liberty. In chapter 6, Morrison again analyzes Morley's balance of parental theory and practice, this time from 1883 to 1900, while chapter 7, “Generations,” focuses on his relationship with his stepson, Johnson. In each chapter, Morrison provides a brief abstract at the beginning followed by a list of keywords, both of which add to the clarity of the text while admittedly also leading to some redundancies. Still, the overall effect of this structure is very helpful, and most readers will probably appreciate the repetitions. The keyword section in each chapter, while brief, is a little jarring, yet it too is useful, particularly if one is searching the eBook version. The sequence of the chapters works well in providing a thorough examination of Morley's written musings on parenthood, integrated seamlessly with an analysis of his own practices in raising his stepchildren, nephew, and step-grandchildren. I came away with a renewed appreciation of and interest in Morley and also a better understanding of how liberal philosophy has impacted approaches to parenthood. That Morrison achieves this in under 120 pages is impressive, and it demonstrates the potential of micro-historical approaches.