Review of Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Historians are every bit as likely as the next person to see the past as the reflection of the present. Thus the labour movement, the civil-rights movement, and the women's movement have all inspired historical subdisciplines. More recently, animal advocacy has had a similar impact. In his exha...

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Main Author: Ritvo, Harriet
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. History Section
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Oxford University Press 2012
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72393
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6278-3571
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author Ritvo, Harriet
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. History Section
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. History Section
Ritvo, Harriet
author_sort Ritvo, Harriet
collection MIT
description Historians are every bit as likely as the next person to see the past as the reflection of the present. Thus the labour movement, the civil-rights movement, and the women's movement have all inspired historical subdisciplines. More recently, animal advocacy has had a similar impact. In his exhaustively researched survey, James Gregory explores the antecedents of the gustatory arm of the modern humane movement. He sees these antecedents as distinctively Victorian. That is, he does not explore the entire history of vegetarianism, which stretches back at least to ancient Greece, nor does he spend much time on Romantic individualists such as Shelley. Instead, he is concerned with organised, institutional vegetarianism, which began, in his view, around 1838. As he persuasively demonstrates the extent to which Victorian vegetarianism reflected its social and cultural contexts, he raises several other questions to which the answers are more elusive. How important was vegetarianism in nineteenth-century Britain? And how closely did Victorian vegetarianism resemble its contemporary avatar?
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spelling mit-1721.1/723932022-10-01T23:00:37Z Review of Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain Ritvo, Harriet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. History Section Ritvo, Harriet Ritvo, Harriet Historians are every bit as likely as the next person to see the past as the reflection of the present. Thus the labour movement, the civil-rights movement, and the women's movement have all inspired historical subdisciplines. More recently, animal advocacy has had a similar impact. In his exhaustively researched survey, James Gregory explores the antecedents of the gustatory arm of the modern humane movement. He sees these antecedents as distinctively Victorian. That is, he does not explore the entire history of vegetarianism, which stretches back at least to ancient Greece, nor does he spend much time on Romantic individualists such as Shelley. Instead, he is concerned with organised, institutional vegetarianism, which began, in his view, around 1838. As he persuasively demonstrates the extent to which Victorian vegetarianism reflected its social and cultural contexts, he raises several other questions to which the answers are more elusive. How important was vegetarianism in nineteenth-century Britain? And how closely did Victorian vegetarianism resemble its contemporary avatar? 2012-08-28T19:57:34Z 2012-08-28T19:57:34Z 2010-02 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/BookReview 0013-8266 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72393 Ritvo, Harriet. Review of: Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by James Gregory (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007; pp. 313. £59.50), English Historical Review, (April 2010) CXXV (513): 460-462. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6278-3571 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceq030 English Historical Review Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Oxford University Press Ritvo via Michelle Baildon
spellingShingle Ritvo, Harriet
Review of Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain
title Review of Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain
title_full Review of Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain
title_fullStr Review of Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain
title_full_unstemmed Review of Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain
title_short Review of Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain
title_sort review of of victorians and vegetarians the vegetarian movement in nineteenth century britain
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72393
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6278-3571
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