Reform and Its Complexities in Modern Britain: Essays Inspired by Sir Brian Harrison

The essays in this volume, taken together, span the era of British history from 1780 to the present that has engrossed the attention of Brian Harrison in a career of more than fifty years. In keeping with his diverse interests, they vary widely in subject matter. Yet each contributes, in some fashion, to an appreciation of the complexities of reform in modern Britain. Throughout his career Harrison has demonstrated an unwavering interest in social movements and pressure groups. He has analysed the organisation of reform movements and their bases of support; explored the aspirations and beliefs motivating individuals to start or join such movements; and examined the ideas and ideals shaping their conception of human improvement. No one has done more to show that the significance of a reform movement's triumphs and disappointments can be grasped only in relation to the forces amassed to resist its claims. The essays gathered here, on the Harrisonian theme of reform and its complexities, form an acknowledgment of the massive mark their honouree has made on the study of modern British history. They are preceded by a Foreword composed by Keith Thomas and an editorial Introduction tracing the course of Harrison's scholarship and connecting that scholarship to the substance of the essays. The volume encompasses both wide-ranging analytical investigations and telling case studies. All have new things to say on the subject of reform and its complexities in modern Britain.

Bruce Kinzer is emeritus professor of history at Kenyon College. Most of his scholarship has focused on J.S. Mill. He is the author of J.S. Mill Revisited: Biographical and Political Explorations (2007), England's Disgrace? J.S. Mill and the Irish Question (2001), and co-author, with Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, of A Moralist In and Out of Parliament: John Stuart Mill at Westminster, 1865―1868 (1992). He joined John M. Robson in co-editing Mill's Public and Parliamentary Speeches, volumes 28―9 of Mill's Collected Works (1988). He also wrote The Ballot Question in Nineteenth-Century English Politics (1982).

Molly Baer Kramer is an independent scholar and works at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. She was a Rhodes Scholar and completed her DPhil A More Humane Society: Animal Welfare and Human Nature in England, 1950―1976 at Wadham College, Oxford, with Brian Harrison as supervisor. She is writing a comparative history of the British and American animal protection movements after the Second World War.

Richard Trainor, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford since 2014, and a Pro Vice Chancellor since 2016, chaired Oxford's Conference of Colleges 2017―19. He was Principal of King's College London 2004―14, and President of Universities UK 2007―9. Educated at Brown, Princeton, and Oxford (where his DPhil thesis was supervised by Brian Harrison), he held appointments at Glasgow (professor of social history, dean and vice principal) and Greenwich (vice chancellor) Universities. He was President of the Economic History Society 2013―16 and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His published work has focused on the social history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, especially the urban middle class, its elites, and their involvement in universities.