Charity & Condescension ─ Victorian Literature and the Dilemmas of Philanthropy

Daniel Siegel (English, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL) has written a social history of Victorian charity in the guise of a literary analysis. The book uses the tools of English literature scholarship, looking at the work of well-known 19th century English poets and writers (Dickens, Tennyson, Eliot). However, the focus of the book is on the idea of condescension, originally a charitable virtue that took on its modern meaning as industrialization created a culture of poverty in the London slums. Siegel uses literary sources to trace how Victorian society struggled to understand what charity could mean in this new society and how it could possibly work. While most of the book focuses on literary sources, one chapter on Samuel Barnett, Octavia Hill, and the London slums gives the rest a clear historical context. While the book will be most appealing to readers familiar with literary analysis or fans of Victorian literature, the writing style is clear and accessible, and the level of social connection is daring and unusual for a literature scholar; readers with an interest in the subject from other angles than literature (history, culture, class, philanthropy) may find it a useful book. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)