Background
Himmelfarb, Gertrude was born on August 8, 1922 in New York City. Daughter of Max and Bertha (Lerner) Himmelfarb.
(Where "Victorianism" once conjured up an image of smugnes...)
Where "Victorianism" once conjured up an image of smugness, hypocrisy, and mindlessness, it now suggests quite the reverse: an age of high intellectual, moral, and spiritual tension, in which the typical problems of modernity were posed in their most acute forms. Gertrude Himmelfarb's distinguished piece of intellectual history explores these tensions and problems with sympathy, candor, and critical subtlety. Victorian Minds is a study of intellectuals in crisis and of ideologies in transition, rendered with an elegance of style and thought. "Few works that I know convey the excitement of the intellectual life of 19th-century England as immediately. ... The essays are remarkable no less for the cogency of their wit than for the range and precision of their scholarship"―Lionel Trilling. "Precise and discriminating ... an exemplary study of the 19th century and a superb introduction to the 20th."―Robert A. Nisbet. "Miss Himmelfarb is a writer to whom the organization of ideas into intricate shapes and patterns is imperative, and like many of her subjects-and comparatively few modern intellectuals-she is capable of poised and meaningful generalization."― A. S. Byatt.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566630770/?tag=2022091-20
(In these brilliant essays, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of Am...)
In these brilliant essays, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America’s most respected scholars of Victorian thought and culture, explores the many facets, public and private, of the Victorian idea of morality. Incisively and provocatively she illuminates the "moral imagination" of the Victorians, "the imagination that treasured the complexity of the heart and mind and that sought, by aesthetic means as well as ethical, to adorn and enhance rather than destroy the 'decent drapery of life.'" The conventional view of Victorianism―a Family Shakespeare purged of indelicacies, piano legs sheathed in pantaloons, and the works of male and female authors chastely residing on separate shelves―gives way to the subtle and sympathetic analysis of an ethos that combined a profound sense of social and moral responsibility with a remarkable tolerance for idiosyncrasy and individuality. Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians invites us to reconsider the complex and colorful panorama of ideas and attitudes, beliefs and behavior, that goes under the name of Victorianism―and it reconsiders well our own relation to that much abused and misunderstood culture. "An important book that deserves a wide readership. It deserves to be read for the critical quality of Miss Himmelfarb’s mind and the constant questioning of fashionable attitudes. One does not have to agree with her to enjoy the characteristic sharpness of her writing, or the characteristic breadth of her reading."―New York Times Book Review. "A collection of extraordinarily intelligent essays, held together not by a single thread of argument but by the sustained moral imagination of an acute student of nineteenth-century life and thought....Miss Himmelfarb’s essays make clear that there was nothing wrong with either the Victorians’ morality or their imaginations."―National Review.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566633702/?tag=2022091-20
(In a provocative study that bristles with contemporary re...)
In a provocative study that bristles with contemporary relevance, Himmelfarb demonstrates that the material and moral dimensions of poverty were inseparable in the minds of late Victorians, be they radical or conservative.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679741739/?tag=2022091-20
(In these provocative essays, one of our most distinguishe...)
In these provocative essays, one of our most distinguished historians looks into the abyss of the present. Himmelfarb exposes the intellectual and spiritual impoverishment of some of our most fashionable current ideas--and shows how the vogue for historical structuralism has made it possible to trivialize the tragedy of the Holocaust.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679759239/?tag=2022091-20
(From one of today's most respected historians and cultura...)
From one of today's most respected historians and cultural critics comes a new book examining the gulf in American society--a division that cuts across class, racial, ethnic, political and sexual lines. One side originated in the tradition of republican virtue, the other in the counterculture of the late 1960s. Himmelfarb argues that, while the latter generated the dominant culture of today-particularly in universities, journalism, television, and film--a "dissident culture" continues to promote the values of family, a civil society, sexual morality, privacy, and patriotism. Proposing democratic remedies for our moral and cultural diseases, Himmelfarb concludes that it is a tribute to Americans that we remain "one nation" even as we are divided into "two cultures."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375704108/?tag=2022091-20
(In an elegant, eminently readable work, one of our most d...)
In an elegant, eminently readable work, one of our most distinguished intellectual historians gives us a brilliant revisionist history. The Roads to Modernity reclaims the Enlightenment–an extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about human nature, politics, society, and religion--from historians who have downgraded its importance and from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France over concurrent movements in England and America.Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy and wisdom of the British, exemplified in such thinkers as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Edmund Burke, as well as the unique and enduring contributions of the American Founders. It is their Enlightenments, she argues, that created a social ethic–humane, compassionate, and realistic–that still resonates strongly today, in America perhaps even more than in Europe.The Roads to Modernity is a remarkable and illuminating contribution to the history of ideas.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400077222/?tag=2022091-20
(The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American...)
The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments by H...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MB466LU/?tag=2022091-20
( It is one of the curiosities of history that the most r...)
It is one of the curiosities of history that the most remarkable novel about Jews and Judaism, predicting the establishment of the Jewish state, should have been written in 1876 by a non-Jew – a Victorian woman and a formidable intellectual, who is generally regarded as one of the greatest of English novelists. And it is still more curious that Daniel Deronda, George Eliot’s last novel, should have been dismissed, by many of her admirers at the time and by some critics since, as something of an anomaly, an inexplicable and unfortunate turn in her life and work. Yet Eliot herself was passionately committed to that novel, having prepared herself for it by an extraordinary feat of scholarly research in five languages (including Hebrew), exploring the ancient, medieval, and modern sources of Jewish history. Three years later, to reenforce that commitment, she wrote an essay, the very last of her writing, reaffirming the heritage of the Jewish “nation” and the desirability of a Jewish state – this well before the founders of Zionism had conceived of that mission. Why did this Victorian novelist, born a Christian and an early convert to agnosticism, write a book so respectful of Judaism and so prescient about Zionism? And why at a time when there were no pogroms or persecutions to provoke her? What was the general conception of the “Jewish question,” and how did Eliot reinterpret that “question,” for her time as well as ours? Gertrude Himmelfarb, a leading Victorian scholar, has undertaken to unravel the mysteries of Daniel Deronda. And the mysteries of Eliot herself: a novelist who deliberately wrote a book she knew would bewilder many of her readers, a distinguished woman who opposed the enfranchisement of women, a moralist who flouted the most venerable of marital conventions – above all, the author of a novel that is still an inspiration or provocation to readers and critics alike.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594032513/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XV9P6VK/?tag=2022091-20
( For this updated edition of her acclaimed work on hist...)
For this updated edition of her acclaimed work on historians and the writing of history, Gertrude Himmelfarb adds four insightful and provocative essays dealing with changes in the discipline over the past twenty years. In examining the effects of postmodernism, the illusions of cosmopolitanism, A. J. P. Taylor and revisionism, and Francis Fukuyama's "end of history," Himmelfarb enriches her illuminating exploration of the myriad ways--new and old--in which historians make sense of the past.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674013840/?tag=2022091-20
( For this updated edition of her acclaimed work on hist...)
For this updated edition of her acclaimed work on historians and the writing of history, Gertrude Himmelfarb adds four insightful and provocative essays dealing with changes in the discipline over the past twenty years. In examining the effects of postmodernism, the illusions of cosmopolitanism, A. J. P. Taylor and revisionism, and Francis Fukuyama's "end of history," Himmelfarb enriches her illuminating exploration of the myriad ways--new and old--in which historians make sense of the past.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674013840/?tag=2022091-20
(In a provocative study that bristles with contemporary re...)
In a provocative study that bristles with contemporary relevance, Himmelfarb demonstrates that the material and moral dimensions of poverty were inseparable in the minds of late Victorians, be they radical or conservative.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679741739/?tag=2022091-20
(One of America's most distinguished intellectual historia...)
One of America's most distinguished intellectual historians explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times: Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill, Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill, Jane Austen and George Eliot, Charles Dickens and John Buchan, Walter Bagehot and the Knox brothers, Michael Oakeshott and Lionel Trilling. In their distinctive ways, Ms. Himmelfarb argues, they exemplify what Burke two centuries ago and Trilling most recently have called the moral imagination.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566637228/?tag=2022091-20
professor of history and author
Himmelfarb, Gertrude was born on August 8, 1922 in New York City. Daughter of Max and Bertha (Lerner) Himmelfarb.
Bachelor, Brooklyn College, 1942. Master of Arts, University Chicago, 1944. Doctor of Philosophy, University Chicago, 1950.
Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Rhode Island College, 1976. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Kenyon College, 1985. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Adelphi University, 1989.
Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Boston University, 1987. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Yale University, 1990. Little D. (honorary), Smith College, 1977.
Little D. (honorary), Lafayette College, 1978. Little D. (honorary), Jewish Theological Seminary, 1978. Little D. (honorary), Williams College, 1989.
Doctor of Laws (honorary), Union College, 1989.
Professor, of History, Graduate School, City University New York 1965-1988, Professor Emeritus since 1988. Fellow, American Philosophical Society, American Academy, of Arts and Sciences, Royal Historical Society, etc. Many public and professional appointments.
Rockefeller Foundation Aw'ard 1962-1963. Guggenheim Fellow 1955-1956, 1957-1958. Honorary L.H.D. (R.I. College) 1976, (Kenyon College) 1985.
Honorary Litt.D. (Smith College) 1977, Lafayette College.
(One of America's most distinguished intellectual historia...)
( It is one of the curiosities of history that the most r...)
(Where "Victorianism" once conjured up an image of smugnes...)
(In a provocative study that bristles with contemporary re...)
(In a provocative study that bristles with contemporary re...)
( For this updated edition of her acclaimed work on hist...)
( For this updated edition of her acclaimed work on hist...)
(In these brilliant essays, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of Am...)
(From one of today's most respected historians and cultura...)
(In an elegant, eminently readable work, one of our most d...)
(In these provocative essays, one of our most distinguishe...)
(The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American...)
(Book by Himmelfarb, Gertrude)
(1)
Author: Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics, 1952, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, 1959, Victorian Minds, 1968, On Liberty and Liberalism– The Case of John Stuart Mill, 1975, The Idea of Poverty, 1984, Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians, 1986, The New History and the Old, 1987, Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians, 1991, On Looking Into The Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society, 1994, The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virutes to Modern Values, 1995, One Nation, Two Cultures, 1999, The Road to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenment, 2004, The Moral Imagination, 2006, The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot, 2009.
Member council scholars Library. of Congress. Member council academy advisors American Enterprise Institute. Fellow British Academy, American Philosophical Society, Royal History Society, American Academy Arts and Sciences, Society of America Historians.
Member American History Association.
Married Irving Kristol, January 18, 1942. Children– William, Elizabeth.