Description
Book SynopsisSoldier, hero, and politician, the Duke of Wellington is one of the best-known figures of nineteenth-century England. From his victory at Waterloo over Napoleon in 1815, he rose to become prime minister of his country. But Peter Sinnema finds equal fascination in Victorian England’s response to the duke’s death.
Trade Review“The scholarship is impeccable, and the analysis both thorough and subtle; it is easy to read and full of useful and fascinating information.The Wake of Wellington should be read by anyone interested in the Victorian period.” * Victorian Studies *
“Sinnema provides fascinating insight into the process by which an Anglo-Irishman assumed Englishness and was appropriated (with some whitewashing of his personal life, and despite his political reputation) as a quintessential Englishman, the embodiment of the English traits of ‘simplicity of character, common sense, and the veneration of duty,’ whose ‘death celebrations staged Englishness, London, and the [English] nation.’” * University of Toronto Quarterly *
“Well-researched, well-written, well-organized, informative, and often entertaining.” -- Patrick Brantlinger, author of Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930
“The funeral on November 18, 1852, of Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, was less a laying to rest than an earthquake, exposing a range of fault lines in Victorian culture and producing aftershocks felt long after the event. These aftereffects are the subjects of Peter W. Sinnema’s The Wake of Wellington, which focuses on neither the illustrious man nor his lavish funeral, but on the cultural repercussions that followed in the wake of his death.” * Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly *
