LORD ACRON

This is the first full-length biography of this remarkable man, making full use of archival and published materials about him. Placing Acton in the context of Catholic politics in Britain (which made him something of an outsider), it offers a wonderful life-and-times picture. Acton was born at Naples in 1834 and died at Tegernsee in Germany in 1902. Roland Hill's book covers Acton's upbringing and education in Italy, France, England, and Germany, his activities as Member of Parliament, his work as editor and owner of Liberal Catholic journals, his opposition to the doctrine of papal infallibility at the Vatican Council of 1869 to 1870, and his lifelong preoccupation with the history of freedom. Through his friendship with Prime Minister Gladstone, Acton was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, where he transformed historical study and planned the Cambridge Modern History series. The enigmatic Acton was of course held in the highest esteem for his great learning and ideas on politics, religion, and the development of institutions and views fostering human freedom. Knocking Acton as a pompous Victorian has been a pastime of a new generation of young British historians. This approach is to try and understand the enigmatic personality in its personal, emotional, and intellectual pre-occupations and to get thus at the man and his ideas.

Lord Acton's statement that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" is probably better known than he is. In this well-researched and coherently written biography, Hill, a retired journalist who has long studied Acton's work, draws on known publications as well as Acton's private notes. A highly respected historian and teacher, Acton (1834-1902) studied and maintained friendships in Italy and Germany besides England. His "compulsive note-taking" was in three languages, and the notes were dispersed in libraries throughout Europe. They were very fragmented, and Acton's granddaughter helped with their contextual reconstruction. Acton wrote almost 20 monographs in English, Italian, and German and was criticized for not further sharing his breadth of learning through writing. A devout Catholic, he edited the Catholic journal Rambler, earning it a reputation for independent intellectual thought; Acton himself disagreed with some Catholic tenets, including papal infallibility. Hill's book should be added to academic collections, though public libraries may wish to defer to the local college collections.
-Robert C. Moore, Raytheon, Sudbury, MA
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