Author Description

ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEEN-EIGHTIES TOWARD A SOCIAL BASIS FOR FREEDOM HELEN MERRELL LYND OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS London New York Toronto 1945 A WARTIME BOOK THIS COMPLETE EDITION IS PRODUCED JN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH THE GOVERN MENTS REGULATIONS FOR CONSERVING PAPER AND OTHER ESSENTIAL MATKRIAI. S TO ANDREA and STAUGHTON and My FATHER and MOTHER Foreword THIS BOOK has been in preparation during a number of years. Inevitably it reflects different stages in my thinking, and any acknowledgment of the many persons who have contributed to that thinking is particularly inadequate. In the preparation of the book I owe incomparably more to Robert S. Lynd than to any other person. His hand ap pears in the organization of the material, in the conceptual analysis, and in the writing of several chapters, especially of Chapters n and vn. What he has contributed is beyond any possibility of adequate recognition. It was Carlton J. H. Hayes who first directed my attention to the importance of the decade of the eighties in social history. J. Bartlctt Brebner read the entire manuscript with great discernment and gave me invaluable criticisms, Charles E. Trinkaus Jr., Maxwell Geismar, Jean Carroll Trepp, Emery Ncff, and Jacques Barzun gave me important sug gestions on parts of the manuscript. Friends in England were generous in helping to supply details which are not readily accessible to an American. I recall with especial pleasure a day spent with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and conversations with Graham Wallas, John Burns, R. II. Tawncy, G. D. H. Cole, Harold Laski, and J. L. and Barbara Hammond. Catherine Turner not only had great patience in the typing of the manuscript but through resourcefulness and care hi checking of sources saved me from errors I might otherwise have committed, Patricia Becsley was a keen and delightful companion in proof reading and index making vii viii FOREWORD the book would have profited by her counsel at earlier stages. Footnotes have been divided those that c