| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the Journal of Social History online. About 190 words from this article are provided below; about 621 words remain.

If you are an individual subscriber to the Journal of Social History, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the Journal of Social History, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of Social History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to the journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.4 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England. By Dror Wahrman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. xviii plus 414 pp.).

The eighteenth century, student historians were once warned, was an insubstantial age of silver between the epochal crises of the previous century and the industrial and imperial expansion of the next. Britain's eighteenth century still labors under this stereotype to a degree, despite the efforts of its scholars to have it witness the "making" of crucial historical categories: the working class (E.P. Thompson), the middle class (Peter Earle), a ruling class (Philip Jenkins), and more recently and ambitiously the modern world (Roy Porter). In this respect, Dror Wahrman is only the most recent historian to attempt to elevate the "forgotten century" to greater prominence in British historical studies, but he has done so by focusing our attention on the very superficiality that has consigned the period to the margins for so long. In fact, the reader may wonder if the image of the "short eighteenth century" is the enduring legacy of the "regime change" that is documented so exhaustively here.

. . .

There are about 621 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.