The Critic Magazine

High priestess of a new morality

The stifling mores of Victorian and Edwardian high society were often challenged by its better and more imaginative brains

can qualify as an illustration of Carlyle’s great man theory, then it is surely the nineteenth century. It was a time when individual men did demonstrably great things, such as invent world-changing machines, fight wars and even win them, cure diseases and make scientific discoveries, engage in social reform, and generate exciting new movements in the arts. And of course, despite a female monarch on the throne for much of the period, it was largely a

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